Degree debacle threatens VCU leader's legacy -- and job
By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Amid a flurry of resignations and indignation at VCU, President Eugene P. Trani's odds of emerging unscathed from the Rodney Monroe fiasco reached a higher degree of difficulty.
Ever since we learned that Monroe, as Richmond police chief, completed only two courses at Virginia Commonwealth University before receiving a degree from the school, Trani's name has been dropped in the unfortunate company of Mike Garrison's.
Garrison is the West Virginia University president who announced last month that he will step down in September, in the wake of a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story that WVU conferred an unearned MBA on the daughter of West Virginia's governor. The West Virginia Ethics Commission is investigating.
VCU's in-house probe of the Monroe affair has left folks less than satisfied. Five high-ranking officials resigned from their leadership positions, with one leaving the school altogether.
In resigning as dean of the College of Humanities and Sciences, Robert D. Holsworth was particularly outspoken in criticizing the way VCU investigators treated faculty members and said one faculty member's prospects for tenure had been threatened during the probe.
VCU officials have been far from transparent, leaving the public with the most opaque notion about what exactly happened before Monroe left to be police chief in Charlotte, N.C. Trani, meanwhile, has been laid low by heart surgery.
Being a college president is a rough gig. Ask the recently deposed presidents at the University of Mary Washington, the College of William and Mary and the University of Richmond.
Those presidents had tough sledding from Day One and never really succeeded in winning over their detractors.
Trani, on the other hand, is a legitimate power broker. If his iron-fisted rule didn't sit well with faculty and staff members, the general public credited him with redeveloping our downtown and guiding VCU's emergence as the state's largest university. Few would have imagined only a few months ago that a controversy of this magnitude would jeopardize not only his legacy, but also his presidency.
Trani's rise to prominence has not been without its critics. And the relationship between VCU and City Hall -- and among Trani, Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and Holsworth, the mayor's political ally -- has been fraught with the appearance of conflict. You could argue that this debacle is the price VCU pays for becoming so unambiguously tangled in city politics.
Some folks are calling for an independent probe. It doesn't sound as if Gov. Timothy M. Kaine -- mentioned as VCU's next president or Barack Obama's running mate -- wants to get involved. "At this point, we see this as an internal university issue," said Kaine spokeswoman Delacey Skinner.
But this has never been an internal VCU matter -- not when it involves a former police chief and a sitting mayor.
This matter has spilled beyond Virginia and was a subject of interest in North Carolina and Decatur, Ga., where the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools is based. The association has been probing the incident; its findings would be welcome.
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