The Virginia state Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would add a nonvoting staff member to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors for the first time in the board’s history.
The bill would also codify the position of a nonvoting faculty member, which the board already has but is not required by law, and allow faculty to choose its representative on the governing body.
Though nonvoting members, the staff and faculty representatives “would bring much-needed voices to the Board during deliberations, and it is critical that they are able to select their own representatives,” said state Sen. Creigh Deeds, a Democrat who represents the university in the upper house of the General Assembly and the author of the bill.
The bill passed the Senate on Tuesday in a 22-16 party-line vote that had the full support of the chamber’s Democrats. It now moves to the House, where it will likely face a challenge from the Republicans who control that chamber.
People are also reading…
Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin would not say whether he supports the bill.
“The governor will review the legislation when it comes to his desk,” Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said in a statement to The Daily Progress on Wednesday.
The UVa Board of Visitors is the governing body of the university and makes decisions on the budget, construction, honor code and academic curriculum. It can also hire and fire the university president. The board currently has 17 voting members who have been appointed by the governor and confirmed by the General Assembly.
In addition, the board includes two nonvoting members: a student representative required by law, who applies for the position and is chosen by the board’s executive committee after a series of interviews, and a faculty representative, which is not required by law and is selected by the board from a slate of three recommended by the Faculty Senate.
Deeds’ bill would not only codify the faculty seat at UVa but also give faculty more power in how that seat is filled.
If signed into law, the Faculty Senate would elect a single person to serve a one-year term as the faculty representative to the Board of Visitors.
Up until December of last year, this was how faculty already selected its representative.
In December, the Faculty Senate voted to change its bylaws in favor of the three-man slate.
Tish Jennings, chair of the Faculty Senate, said at the time that the decision was made to appease the Board of Visitors, which had suggested the position was not required under law and could be removed.
“They interpret it as an option, they don’t have to have anybody representing the faculty on the Board of Visitors,” Jennings told The Daily Progress in December. “They made that pretty clear to us that that was their interpretation of the law.”
Jennings on Monday said that she approves of the new legislation for UVa but would have liked to have seen it expanded to apply to all state colleges and universities.
“I think my major concern is that it only applies to UVa,” Jennings told The Daily Progress. “I think if there was going to be a change in the law related to this, it should be across the board for all public institutions, not just UVa.”
Deeds said there was a reason the language was limited to UVa.
“The idea was brought to me by members of the United Campus Workers at UVA, so the bill we worked on together is written specifically for UVA,” Deeds said.
The United Campus Workers is a union of employees at public colleges and universities. The UVa chapter did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Progress on Wednesday.
