Opinion: Shrewd silence on Ross decision must not be overlooked

Tom Ross’ ouster as UNC system president is troubling in its own right, but more troubling still has been the Board of Governors’ unwillingness to explain itself.

Was Ross not good at his job? The BOG went out of its way to praise Ross for his work and deny that performance had anything to do with his departure.

Was Ross too old? The board’s chairman said Ross’ age — 65 this year — was not a factor in the board’s decision.

Did the board believe his leadership to be tainted by the flagship school’s athletic scandal? The reply to this line of inquiry, too, was a categorical “no.”

With those three run-of-the-mill reasons for removing someone from his position taken off the table, we are left with a narrow range of speculation.

Perhaps Tom Ross is a secret Duke fan. Maybe he walked in on two BOG members in the midst of a scandalous affair.

Or, more likely, his politics were inconsistent with the predominantly Republican General Assembly’s profit-centered vision for higher education in North Carolina.

All institutions have political agendas, but the board’s inability to point to a single concrete point upon which Ross’s successor could improve is disconcerting. It suggests that the board is aware of the way in which its decision to remove him contradicts the wishes of the university communities to which the BOG is accountable.

The board is depending on the decision being received with general apathy, understanding that its opponents would have a hard time organizing against such a shapeless threat. And when people dare to point out that political motives seem to be very much at play, the board’s silence makes it that much easier to dismiss them as conspiracy theorists.

To determine the board’s motives, we can only examine the potential effects of its actions and general trends to this point. With Tom Ross gone, what could happen that isn’t already happening?

The goals of the board, whose members are elected by the General Assembly, have become increasingly divergent from those of the people who attend and work at the state’s Universities.

The General Assembly has been characterized recently by its desire to shape the state’s academic institutions to its own liking by blocking gender-neutral housing and capping need-based aid, for instance.

Tom Ross’ center-left politics and strong ties to the state Democratic party fell in opposition to McCrorian efforts to monetize North Carolina’s universities and gut social sciences institutions. No board tasked with choosing its leader’s successor would voluntarily place a similar obstacle in its path toward reform. Ross’ successor will likely be a willing agent of the Republican legislature.

Our goal in the coming months should be to remind the Board of Governors that they are accountable to the state’s students, faculty and staff — not the whims of the General Assembly.

It’s not too much to ask that a body tasked with representing the interests of the university system explain to members of that system the reasons for personnel decisions as drastic as the one made Friday. If it lacks the courage to do so, perhaps it is the Board of Governors that is not fit to lead.