Being "Pissed Off" Is Not a Solution

by James A. BaconLast week an unidentified group distributed a pamphlet addressed to the Board of Visitors: "We're Pissed Off. You Should Be Too." The tract argued that the governance structure at UVa is undemocratic, that faculty and student workers are underpaid, and that Board of Visitors member Bert Ellis (and Jefferson Council president) is an abomination who should be expelled from the board or, at the very least, be removed from his board committee assignments.The authors did themselves no credit when referring to Ellis as "a known racist, homophobe, and bigoted asshole of a human being." (The bold face is in the pamphlet.) That is not an invitation to a creating a dialogue and working out differences.Having countered the slanders against Ellis elsewhere, I will not address them here. Rather, my intention is to take seriously the "We're Pissed Off" critique of UVa's governance structure. As puerile as its language is, the pamphlet is the only analysis we've seen (other than our own) that questions how UVa is run.You will never see the issues raised by "We're Pissed Off" in UVa Today, the mouthpiece of the Ryan administration, or in Virginia, the house organ of the University of Virginia Alumni Association. Such perspectives are rare even in the pages of the Cavalier Daily, which fixates on issues of racial, sexual and gender identity rather than how the university is governed.We think the authors of "We're Pissed Off" are wrong on almost every count. But occasionally they make a valid point. And other than their unhinged personal attacks on Ellis, they address important matters that warrant an open and honest discussion. These include such questions as:

• Is UVa an "undemocratic" institution? Is power distributed among stakeholders as it should be?
• Are faculty and student workers paid adequately for their work?
• Can UVa tap its $14 billion endowment to increase employee compensation and/or reduce tuition?
• Would a conservative-leaning Board of Visitors under Governor Glenn Youngkin "reverse every progressive policy ... that took years to put into place"?

The Jefferson Council takes these issues seriously. We think they should be discussed. And if the authors of the tract wish to carry on a dialogue without engaging in character assassination, we are delighted to do so. If they paid attention to what we're trying to accomplish, they might find we share a few areas of agreement.I will address issues arising from the pamphlet in future posts.