When my opponent does something, it is “politicizing.” When I do it, it is “defending.” This is essentially the argument being made by Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her allies in higher education.
On the day Spanberger was inaugurated, she took control of the Boards of Visitors that govern several public universities by forcing appointees of her predecessor to resign, filling those and other vacant spots with dozens of her own appointees. There were numerous vacancies because Virginia’s legislature refused to confirm many nominations by her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin.
In Virginia, the governor gets to appoint members to the board of public universities. But the timing of those appointments is staggered, so that a new governor would only have appointed a majority toward the end of his or her single four-year term. By refusing to confirm appointments, the Virginia legislature blocked Youngkin’s appointees from fully controlling those universities.
The justification many offered is that Youngkin was acting inappropriately by attempting to control the governance of higher education.
According to Bethany Letiecq, an associate professor of Research Methods, and Human Development and Family Science, at George Mason University in Northern Virginia and one of the leaders of its faculty union: “Governor Youngkin, stymied by a state legislature led by Democrats, has politicized BOVs [Board of Visitors] across the Commonwealth, including at the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute and Mason, to do his bidding.”