Not necessarily here, mainly thru twitter but have been seeing more Jim Ryan takes in terms of athletics. What role should a college president have or what standard should they be held to?
In my opinion sports is important for driving money but like Iâd hope itâs 5th, 6th, or 7th, on a presidentâs list of priorities. Iâve seen some takes blaming him a bit or he is he the right president for UVA but it seems like from a student perspective, give me Jim Ryan over Teresa Sullivan 1000000x.
How important should athletics be in a presidentâs role?
There is a thread on the Sabre saying the BOV is meeting perhaps today to decide on Ryanâs future at UVA. Not sure the merit to that, but that chatter is out there and itâs been clear that the recent BOV appointees are not fans of the direction of the University.
I crossed paths with him a few times during my time at UVA and can definitively say that Jim Ryan is a good man.
But heâs in a tough position and it seems like heâs always got the loudest morons (on both sides) coming at his neck. I wouldnât donate a cent to this University if they oust him (I already donât tho, those student loans ainât gonna pay themselves)
Donât know how it is now, but when I was a UVa undergraduate and graduate student â decades ago â everyone from a first-year student to the president of the University was addressed as âMisterâ or âMs.â It was as UVa as âfirst yearâ and âthe Groundsâ.
Addressing professors as âMisterâ was UVa tradition, along with âfirst-yearâ and the âGrounds.â Jeffersonian tradition that we were a community of equals.
And meant to respond that if Jim Ryan spent more than maybe an hour of this work week thinking about the baseball program and coach, then that was entirely too much.
He heads a university with 26k+ students with a giant hospital system attached and a budget of 5.8 billion with savings worth 15 billion. The baseball programâs 6 million is literally 1/1000 or 0.1% of UVAâs budget. Based on 2000 working hours a year, thatâs at most 2 hours a year he should spend on baseball.
For the record, I donât think heâs in hot water over athletics.
The tone with the BOV is the school is too liberal (I wonât use the actual topics to avoid the political rabbit hole). And the drama over the medical school is pretty big black eye for Ryan.
They think the faculty are too liberal and donât represent the full range of ideological/political perspectives. They have even suggested or at least implied that candidates for faculty positions should be asked about their political views. Of course, they definitely are opposed to DEI so itâs unclear to me how they can justify hiring faculty with diverse political views if they think DEI is so terrible. A bit of a logical contradiction, to say the least.
Yeah, the hospital/med school stuff isnât great and Ryan is the med school deanâs boss, but I donât hold Ryan that responsible for the hospital side. The medical education side yes. But maybe thatâs just my misperception.
I tried to address the school being too liberal criticism by talking about Ryanâs conservative credentials, clerking for Rehnquist. Heâs got a lot of competing factors to balance and alienating a plurality of students and parents on one side or the other doesnât help anything.
UVAâs the flagship school, you donât want to mess with it too much and damage the prestige. DeSantis isnât doing anything much at UF for example. New College is the lab.
PhDâs are the real ones, though. They came first and date back to at least the 12th century. Doctors were called âdoctorsâ because their education was considered comparable to what a PhD learns.
I mean, probably. Distinctions dating back ~900 years are probably a little shaky.
Yeah this is true. Had a HS Latin teacher who had a PhD and was incredibly proud of it. Of course most taking Latin were looking to go into the medical field so he was always reminding who the term Dr. actually belonged to
