A couple of weeks ago, Walter Smith raised questions about the lack of accountability of the leadership of the University of Virginia Alumni Association. Graduates of the Virginia Military Institute are asking similar questions about the VMI Alumni Association, whose governing rules allow a hermetically sealed oligarchy to perpetuate itself.
Dissident UVa alumni may find the Open Letter penned by their VMI counterparts to be worth reading.
Once upon a time, nobody cared how alumni associations were governed. As long as they held good reunion parties, it didn’t matter. But alumni associations have evolved into adjuncts of university administrations, becoming critical partners in university fund-raising campaigns, purveyors of pro-administration propaganda, and implicit supporters of “progressive” policies pursued by those administrations. Whose interests does UVa’s alumni uphold — those of the alumni, or those of the UVa adminstration?
The very reason I quit donating to UVA. The BOD and the Alumni Association do not have the best interests of UVA in mind. It is a social experiment having little to do with education.