__An in-depth look at one of Gene Nichol’s most outspoken and infamous critics__

p. While his memory of it all is now a little fuzzy, Jim Jones ’82 can still recall the time over 25 years ago when he and his fellow College undergrads stopped the football stadium from being expanded.

p. In true rebellious fashion, Jones and the rest of the protesters did everything they could to stop a new renovation planned for the stadium that would have put the seating capacity at 30,000.
They came out strong against the idea in the face of strong alumni approval dubbing the College’s Board of Visitors the “Board of Tourists,” and even writing the song “Let’s Expand the Stadium for Christmas,” playing the tune frequently on campus radio station WCWM.

p. “We protested like hell and stopped it,” Jones said. “We scared off the donor …. [Back then] I didn’t care what the alumni thought.”

p. Jones now finds himself in a definitively opposite position — as the spokesperson for ShouldNicholBeRenewed.org, the highly secretive, loosely organized group of alumni and students that is doing everything possible to persuade the BOV not to renew College President Gene Nichol’s contract.

p. Jones came into the position after taking notice of Nichol’s actions when the president made the decision to remove the cross from permanent display in the Wren Chapel.

p. “That was what got me paying attention,” Jones said. “My opposition to the cross removal was based not on religion, but it was based on […] the unilateral nature of the decision and the [wording], which I felt from day one highly politicized the situation.”

p. Jones was not alone in being upset over the cross’s removal. Many alumni disapproved of the decision, and SavetheWrenCross.org was formed. Jones became an active member in this organization, writing op-ed pieces against the removal of the cross, but said he was by no means the leader of the group.

p. In the months following the cross’s removal, and even after a compromise had been reached that returned the cross to the chapel in a glass case, many members of SavetheWrenCross.org began to look more closely into Nichol’s background and actions. This scrutiny led to the creation of ShouldNicholBeRenewed.org.
“[The removal of the Wren cross] was the great awakening for people,” Jones said.

p. Jones maintains that his new organization is not merely SavetheWrenCross.org under a new name, but rather a group created as a result of the cross decision, a decision that caused him and his fellow group members to pay more attention to Nichol’s leadership. They did not start the group with the intention of getting rid of Nichol, but rather to explore the situation more closely.

p. “In the beginning, we were seriously interested in asking the question of whether he should be renewed,” Jones said.
Todd Skiles ’92 purchased the URL for the website. A self-labeled Democrat, Skiles said he had some concerns about some of Nichol’s decision-making, but that he wanted to address the situation with civility.

p. “I initially signed on to be part of what I thought would be kind of an Oxford-style debate. I had some questions, but I wanted to actually ask questions,” Skiles said. “From there I think things began to kind of polarize and a lot of us who were sort of in the middle range started to drop out of the discussion.”

p. This polarization included accusations from the pro-Nichol side that SNBR was largely a conservative group that was politically motivated against the progressive, liberal ideology of Nichol (Jones counters that his organization contains “everybody of every stripe, from violent right wingers to left wing atheists”). Those who opposed Nichol’s renewal fired back that Nichol supporters only stood behind the president because of emotional reasons or their own liberal ideologies (Jones said he believes that the only reason the student body has not yet turned on Nichol is because the majority of students’ political leanings are liberal).

p. One incident that polarized the debate came when SNBR chose to include a link to the Lipscomb Report on its website. The report, authored by journalist Thomas Lipscomb ’61, contained information considered by SNBR to be valuable to the debate, but also contained some personal comments about Nichol, including mentions of his weight. Many deemed this an ad hominem attack against the president that has no relevance in the debate over his job performance.

p. “That’s when I withdrew from the discussion,” Skiles said. “Mr. Lipscomb and I respectfully disagree, to put it politely.”

p. Jones said that he and the other group members grappled with the decision to put the report up on the website. Jones said he even contacted Lipscomb to see if he could edit out the portions of the report that mentioned Nichol’s weight and other personal comments. However, Lipscomb told him he could either display the report in its entirety or not at all, and threatened to sue Jones if he were to edit anything out.

p. Tom Fitzpatrick ’04, a first-year law student and active member in IHeartNichol.com, a website supporting Nichol, has a different opinion on the matter.

p. “I think [keeping the Lipscomb Report on the website] is a clever way to disguise an attack against the President, by claiming that it’s an independent resource or an independent paper and then having it as a fundamental front page of your website,” Fitzpatrick said. “Don’t make an attack and then hide behind an excuse that it is an independent source.”

p. Linda Skladany ’66, a BOV member from 1994 to 1998 and a member of SNBR, has high praise for the way Jones has acted as spokesperson.

p. “I think he has done a magnificent job,” Skladany said. She mentioned that she would like to nominate Jones for the alumni medallion because of the work he has done with SNBR.

p. The group itself consists of approximately 60 members, mostly alumni but also a few students. It operates very loosely — through mailing lists — and features an eight-member advisory board. Membership in the group is largely secretive, as Jones says that people fear being made public for a variety of reasons. Some have children who are current students, some have sensitive jobs and some stay secretive because of attacks they have received in the past regarding their opinions of Nichol.

p. Both Jones and Skladany insist that they are taking active roles in this debate because of their dedication to the school.

p. “We love the College more than anything in the world,” Jones said. “We want the College to be the kind of school that we can all be proud of, that we can all love.”

p. The membership of the eight advisory board members is largely secretive as well, although Jones acknowledged that he, Skladany and Andrew McRoberts ’87 are three of its members.
There are no current BOV members involved with the organization, Jones said, nor are there any administration officials. Jones did acknowledge that many individuals — including some important figures — privately pass along information to him.
“People who are close to Nichol, even,” Jones said. “And some who are just close to the College.”

p. Jones became spokesperson for the group with little fanfare. After Skiles launched the website without giving the rest of the organization advanced warning, several members of the press came calling. Jones was selected to speak with them, and thus assumed the role of spokesperson from that point forward.
Because he is the most public member of the group, Jones has become the name most associated with SNBR. This association has brought him some angry comments from some on the pro-Nichol side of the debate, and he frequently engages in message board banter on The Flat Hat website.

p. “I’ve been called everything,” Jones said, mentioning that “socially-regressive Neanderthal” is one of the labels he has earned. “It hasn’t been fun, either.”

p. For any of his message board opponents who may be expecting the man to wear attire fitting a caveman, Jones disappoints. He arrives at the interview for this article wearing blue jeans and a burgundy sweater that evokes more of a combination Bob Villa / Mr. Rogers look than it does Fred Flintstone. Quickly nixing the seating accommodations of a wooden table and chairs, he moves the interview over to a pair of plush green armchairs in the corner of a Falls Church, Va. Starbucks, swinging his legs over one of the chair’s arms.

p. “He is just a caring, down-to-earth person,” said Jones’ wife, who asked not to be named due to security issues involving her job. “He’s very loving, very silly at times.”

p. Jones’ wife added that he likes to watch cartoons, “Kim Possible” being his favorite. She also described him as a “phenomenal” piano player.

p. Jones maintains that while he is a moderate Republican, he is hardly a social conservative. Jones and his wife recently sponsored an exhibit on sharks at the Monterey Bay (Calif.) Aquarium last year, and they regularly give money to an AIDS charity in Washington, D.C.

p. Jones, who works as a Vice President for SRA International, a government consulting firm, estimates that he spent hours every day from July through October of last year working on things for SNBR. The added workload has caused him a tremendous amount of stress, he said, and has made things difficult for him at home.
“My wife has been extremely unhappy about all this,” he said.
He chose not to attend his 25th reunion at the College last year, knowing that some of his classmates objected to the work he was doing with SNBR. He did not return to Williamsburg for last year’s homecoming festivities for the same reason.

p. “I just feel like anyone else who argues for change feels,” Jones said. “If people don’t like me for it I’m just going to have to live with it.”

p. Jones and SNBR were particularly active in the recent controversy over Nichol’s knowledge of the $12 million pledge revoked by donor James McGlothlin ’62. Jones provided The Flat Hat throughout the controversy with the same information that he had presented to the BOV, choosing not to give the information to professional local newspapers like The Daily Press and The Virginia Gazette.

p. “I felt like it was much more important [for the students] to look into this themselves and to make some kind of a report on what we found out,” Jones said. “I felt like it had to be students who looked into Mr. Nichol, not anybody else.”

p. Jones even went as far as urging The Flat Hat to call for Nichol’s resignation after the College released the e-mail correspondence between former College President Tim Sullivan ’66 and Nichol, revealing, in Jones’ opinion, conclusive evidence that Nichol knowingly misled the College community about what he knew regarding McGlothlin’s revoking of a $12 million pledge. The Flat Hat did not call for Nichol’s resignation.

p. Jones has no doubt that Nichol lied about his knowledge of the pledge.

p. “He knew,” Jones said. “He knew exactly what donation was meant. And he also knew that it had never been closed.”
Jones said that SNBR is more or less “dormant” now, and will shut down following the BOV’s decision on Nichol’s contract renewal, regardless of whether or not Nichol is renewed.

p. Jones believes that the BOV will not renew Nichol’s contract. He also thinks that the BOV will reach its decision at the February meeting.

p. “If [the BOV does renew Nichol’s contract], I’m done … we’ve simply tried to advise [the BOV] and make the facts known and hope that they make what we believe is the right decision,” Jones said.

p. Skiles believes that in the event that Nichol’s contract is removed, it will not matter whether or not SNBR disbands.

p. “One website may go down, but one website is not [the whole discussion],” Skiles said. “And I think that there are a lot of people out there who dislike [Nichol] so intensely that even if they renew him and they stop fighting, we could actually be facing an even worse situation, which is where people simply disengage and walk away from the College.”

p. Despite having disagreed with Jones’ decision regarding the Lipscomb Report, Skiles has high praise for Jones.

p. “When I walked away from the early formation of the group and said, ‘This is not who I am,’ … Jim supported me,” Skiles said. “He never badmouthed me, he never called me any names for walking away and for taking a number of liberal folks with me. He is a man of great credibility.”

p. Jones is well aware of his and his group’s importance in shaping the Nichol debate into what it is now. He believes that were it not for the information they provided to the BOV, the BOV would have “proceeded to rubber stamp his renewal.” Jones is not about to apologize for this.

p. “People ask me, ‘Don’t you feel guilty about this?’” he said. “And I say no, because I don’t adopt a cause I don’t believe in and I would never have done this if I hadn’t done all this research – if we hadn’t done all this research – and been absolutely convinced that what we were doing was the important thing to do and was the right thing to do.”

__Nichol grants venue for Sex Workers’ Art Show; Powell vows to develop content policy__

p. College President Gene Nichol announced yesterday that he will not prevent the Sex Workers’ Art Show from appearing on campus.

p. “The president does not generally review requests for campus space for specific student events — that is usually delegated to Student Activities,” College spokesman Brian Whitson said in an e-mail. “However, given the amount of interest and questions expressed about this performance, the president wanted to review thoroughly and discuss with the student sponsors before [the] announcement.”

p. In a statement released yesterday, Nichol said that he met with organizers of the show in an attempt to move the show to an off-campus location. The organizers, however, insisted that it remain on campus.

p. The president stressed that he does not agree with the show’s content.

p. “Like many on campus and beyond, I wish that the show were not coming to the College,” he said.

p. Nichol, a former constitutional lawyer, added he could not censor a show because of its content.

p. “The First Amendment and the defining traditions of openness that sustain universities are hallmarks of academic inquiry and freedom. It is the speech we disdain that often puts these principles to the test,” he said. “The College of William [and] Mary will not knowingly and intentionally violate the constitutional rights of its students. Censorship has no place at a great university.”

p. On behalf of the Board of Visitors, Rector Michael Powell supported Nichol’s decision in a statement released yesterday.

p. “The choice to bring this show to Williamsburg was made by our students, who believe the show offers some value — the same decision also made this year by students at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University,” Powell said, referring to other schools at which the show is touring. “While not everyone agrees with that conclusion, we have faith that our students have the wisdom to put such programming in context if they choose to attend the show.”

p. Some faculty and students are opposed to the show and have already expressed displeasure with its coming to campus.
John Foubert, an assistant professor of education, is one of the lead critics of the show. He has studied sexual violence since 1993.

p. “Based on the research that I have read, I foresee that the Sex Workers’ Art Show is likely to bring increased aggression [and] sexual aggression, and by itself may also lead to a short-term increase in incidents [of] sexual assault at William and Mary as well,” he said.

p. Others, like Thomas Chappell ’11, founder of the Facebook group “Don’t spend our money on the Sex Workers’ Art Show,” are opposed to the use of mandatory student funds to help bring the show to campus.

p. “The show should be allowed on campus, but those that choose to attend should bear the full cost of the ticket prices instead of using everyone else’s money to help the people that attend pay for admission,” Chappell said. “The money simply could have been used for more appropriate and effective purposes.”

p. The show organizers said that they expect to raise enough money through ticket sales and funding from other groups to pay back the Student Assembly in full.

p. Powell said the controversy surrounding the show has raised a serious issue about activities funding and implied the administration may enjoy content oversight in the future.

p. “What has emerged from the discussion is the need to develop a more coherent policy involving the allocation of limited College resources,” he said. “This is something the College will endeavor to do.”

p. The Sex Workers’ Art Show will appear at the University Center Commonwealth Auditorium Feb. 4. One show will take place at 7 p.m. and another at 9:30 p.m. A question-and-answer session will take place following the late show. Tickets are on sale this week.

__Study finds that the average graduate debt for the College exceeds $14,000__

For many students whose families earn up to $180,000 per year, Harvard University is now cheaper than the College.

p. Harvard unveiled a new financial aid plan last month under which a family making less than $180,000 a year would be eligible. Families earning less than $60,000 per year will pay nothing.

p. Since then, other Ivy League schools have unveiled competing plans. Yale University announced a new aid plan Jan. 14 that will be funded by the school’s endowment. The plan also gives financial aid to students with family incomes of under $200,000, according to the Associated Press. At both universities, tuition will be free for any student with a family income of under $60,000.
The new financial aid offerings raise questions about whether the College will respond.

p. “Through the implementation of our Gateway program, we have made significant strides in reducing the loan commitment of our highest-need students,” Ed Irish, director of student financial aid at the College, said. “Nonetheless, we, along with all but a handful of other colleges and universities, do not currently have the aid resources to compete with Harvard’s new policy.”

p. The College determines aid using the standard federal financial aid formula. Almost 60 percent of the freshman class applied for financial aid, and slightly less than half of those were determined to be eligible based on the federal guidelines. The College then met 84 percent of the identified need.

p. Many students at the College have to take out loans, and the average debt after graduation at the College is $14,770, according to The College Board. At Harvard, the average debt is $9,717, while at Yale it is $14,306. Both numbers are expected to go down following the new aid plans.

p. Thanks to greater resources, some private schools use more charitable financial aid formulas.

p. “[Harvard’s new] formula is less of a burden on the family than the federal formula, or the adjusted formula that is used by some other privates,” economics Professor Robert Archibald, who teaches a seminar on the economics of higher education, said.
Harvard economics Professor Gregory Mankiw said that these generous financial aid plans allow colleges to charge based on ability to pay.

p. “The list price is set high, and then many customers are offered a discount called ‘financial aid’ based on their ability to pay,” Mankiw wrote on his blog. “Here’s the secret plan: In the future, Harvard will cost $1 billion a year, and only Bill Gate’s children will pay full price. When anyone else walks through the door, the message will be, ‘Special price, just for you.”

p Archibald agreed that this phenomenon, known as “price discrimination” in economics, is at work in financial aid plans.
In the past, the College has also increased financial aid to correspond with tuition hikes.

p. “We are determined to keep William and Mary accessible to students from all economic backgrounds,” Samuel Jones, vice president for finance, told William and Mary News after a tuition hike proposal was approved by the Board of Visitors in April. “The new budget takes this into account, and approximately $700,000 of the revenue generated from tuition increases will go toward financial assistance programs.”

__Delegate wants alumni to choose College BOV__

p. According to Del. Robert G. Marshall (R-Prince William), there are more problems with the governance of the College than with all other state schools combined.

p. Marshall has proposed a bill to the state House of Delegates calling for a majority of the Board of Visitors to be elected by alumni, as opposed to being appointed by the governor.

p. Acting upon numerous complaints from alumni in the state, Marshall has proposed this bill as “a long-range effort to amend paralysis in the current Board of Visitors.

p. “Alumni love William and Mary first and foremost … they are in the best position to care for the school,” Marshall said. He argues that the current system could amount to simply rewarding political supporters of the governor.

p. “We need to find a system that does not depend on wealth and political connections but on people who benefited from the training of William and Mary,” Marshall said.

p. However, according to Brian Whitson from University Relations, this is already the case.

p. “The Alumni Association makes recommendations each year to the secretary of the commonwealth and the governor’s office. I actually believe we are one of the few schools where our alumni association is involved in the process this way,” Whitson said.
Though Marshall has yet to contact the College regarding the bill, Whitson remarked that “the current process has brought us terrific boards over the years.”

p. The bill calls for nine of the 17 BOV members to be selected by alumni and eight to be selected by the governor. Within each group there may be two non-state residents, resulting in a total of four non-Virginians in the BOV.

p. Yet the bill has received criticism from some at the College. Rector Michael K. Powell said that he did “not think having a set number of seats controlled exclusively by one segment of the college community is wise or workable,” according to Tuesday’s Daily Press article.

p. Marshall disagrees.

p. “[Powell] seems to be arguing that everyone that comes out of William and Mary is from the same cookie-cutter mold, when in fact they come from a wide variety of majors, a wide political spectrum, ethnic spectrum … and their point of unity is William and Mary,” Marshall said. “And since when is unity a bad thing? What ever happened to one nation, under God? You only disagree with [unity] when you disagree with the purpose of oneness.”

p. In the past, Marshall has openly criticized College President Gene Nichol, at one point proposing to have the state-funded portion of Nichol’s salary — about half of the total —withheld in the midst of the Wren cross issue. This followed what Marshall believed to be a violation of the Freedom of Information Act, when Nichol told a different story from what the information in the e-mails regarding the withdrawal of a $12 million donation reported.

p. Today, Marshall sees Nichol’s actions as part of the problem of “paralysis” at the College.

p. “A College president is not supposed to be a friend; he’s supposed to be a director,” Marshall said, using recent College events as an example. “His paralysis with this stupid sex show … why don’t you just get drug dealers to come in and talk about how to make money there? William and Mary is a public forum, but there are restrictions.”

p. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Education and awaits further action.

__Jones says that inquiry will focus on wealthier schools __

In a move that could change how the universities use their endowments and award aid packages, the Senate Finance Committee recently requested financial data from the 136 richest universities in the country regarding the last decade of rising tuitions and fundraising initiatives.

p. With the coffers of many top universities at record highs — a report released last week showed 76 colleges and universities boasting billion dollar endowments — concerns have risen among senators that the costs of higher education are increasing at a far higher rate than inflation.

p. “Tuition has gone up, college presidents’ salaries have gone up and endowments continue to go up and up,” Sen. Charles Grassley (R – Ia.) said in the Jan. 25 edition of The New York Times. “We need to start seeing tuition relief for families go up just as fast.”

p. The current development leaves financial officials at colleges and universities across the country wondering exactly where all of this will go — whether the Senate requested the information as a scare tactic, to bring attention to the rising costliness of higher education or as the first step of a process that will ultimately yield legislation.

p. In the case of legislation, the most likely policy would require universities to spend at least 5 percent of their income per year. The College spends 4.75 percent of its income annually.
Officials at the College say that, while the College will receive a request from the government, any legislation will likely effect schools with larger endowments.

p. Samuel Jones, vice president for finance at the College, stressed the disparity between the richest schools and the rest, the programs already in place here, and the complexity of the university budgeting process as reasons to be positive about the College’s financial situation.

p. He said that these policies tend to target schools like Harvard and Yale — schools with 20 and 30 billion dollars in endowment —which are hardly comparable with the College’s $585 million.
“In addition, what you’ve seen in the last few months, in an attempt to avoid this government involvement, is the premier universities creating large-scale financial aid programs — essentially programs that mimic the Gateway Program,” he said.

p. The Gateway Program awards financial aid to low and middle-income Virginia students.

p. A university’s endowment is not necessarily analogous to free spending money. In most cases a donation comes with specific restrictions.

p. For instance, a donor could stipulate that the original gift not be spent, only the income received from investing that money; or, a donor could require that the gift be used only for a specific program, leaving the college unable to lower tuition for students.

p. In addition, universities often hold off on increasing spending during times of economic prosperity in the name of intergenerational equity, so as to ensure similar opportunities for future generations of students for whom funding may not be at such high levels.

p. The findings of the Senate finance committee, while not promising any immediate change, may have far-reaching consequences for students in a country with some of the most expensive schools in the world. Current students, for their part, welcome the inquiry as a way to better understand the murky world of college finances.

p. “I think that clarifying the process would allow us to understand where all this extra money is going,” said Mike Hodges, class of ’09. “Every year tuition increases, and the hours of operation at the University Center dining hall decrease. What am I paying for?”

Since when was television so exciting? While the Writers’ Guild strike has derailed much of prime time television, the current presidential election has piqued my interest more than “Desperate Housewives,” “House” or “Lost” ever did. With witty banter, pointed accusations, great hair and Oprah, this presidential election couldn’t be more entertaining than, well, “The West Wing.”

p. The Democratic primary in South Carolina perfectly captured the party’s cut-throat nature. Bill and Hillary Clinton spent the week berating Barack Obama about the Illinois senator’s lack of experience and dealings with questionable fundraisers. While the Clintons’ attacks were nothing new, Obama’s retort was a real zinger. At last Tuesday’s debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Obama said, “I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes.” While Obama makes a good point, he also proves to have a capacity for pointed humor.

p. Clinton is not without the ability to command my emotions; while she is never made me laugh like Obama, the former first lady nearly brought me to tears earlier this month. After her loss in Iowa, Clinton was speaking to a group of New Hampshire well-wishers when she broke into tears. “Some people think elections are a game, lots of who’s up or who’s down, [but] it’s about our country, it’s about our kids’ futures and it’s really about all of us together,” she said. Some debate has centered on Clinton’s use of these tears as a means of using her gender as a crutch. Even if Clinton employed emotion to cast herself in a different light, is there anything wrong with it? In such a heavily covered campaign, Clinton cannot be blamed for using any method — tears or otherwise — to win.

p. Currently, the Republican campaign lacks the panache of the Democrats. Mitt Romney and John McCain are currently waging war in Florida. I take issue with their banter, not because of substance, but because it isn’t interesting. McCain and Romney needlessly go back and forth on the ex-governor’s call for a pull-out from Iraq. Unfortunately, there were no tears and no humorous quips to enliven the debate.

p. Even McCain’s ads against Romney lack originality. On Friday, McCain’s campaign released an ad that depicts Romney windsurfing, an obvious reference to negative ads run by George Bush against John Kerry. I will not deny the ex-governor’s political opportunism, but I will admonish McCain’s lack of creativity in pointing it out.

p. With Fred Thompson’s dropout from the presidential race and Rudy Guiliani’s anticipated exit if he loses in Florida, both parties can brag about another point: great hair. Romney has a full head of hair, and McCain sports an impressive coif for someone over 70. Clinton always looks well-kept, and Obama’s short hair looks sporty on the young senator. While John Edwards was critiqued for spending a reported $400 on his locks, it certainly was money well spent. In fact, Edwards joins the ranks of Bill Clinton, who in 1993 was critiqued for spending $300 on a haircut in Los Angeles.

p. These candidates all recognize the importance of image, and some, more than others, have done a nice job of cultivating this image to the ever-present media. With all the talk of gender, race and age, it would seem that image has become an increasingly important factor in the campaign of 2008.

p. But image is not something new to American politics, as author Ben Shapiro points out in a new, punnily named book, “Project President: Bad Hair & Botox on the Road to the White House.” “When we vote, we vote not for a platform, but for a person,” Shapiro writes. “And we judge our presidential candidates the same way we judge everyone else: based on the whole package.”

p. As it turns out, Abe Lincoln was not opposed to Clinton-like jabs when he ran for office, nor were Thomas Jefferson supporters afraid to deliver McCain-style insults against the mental stability of John Adams. Americans have been voting superficially for a long time, so why stop now?

p. If politics lacked drama, only the most devoted of nerds would appreciate it. In addition to helping us make up our minds about candidates, as Shapiro argues, drama makes politics worth watching. So, instead of lamenting the descent of American politics into a messy muck of mudslinging and superficiality, enjoy politics for what it is: the best damn show our forefathers could have created.

p. __James Damon is a Confusion Corner columnist. He’d be happy to cut your hair for a mere $250.__