Lawsuit Seeks to Keep Sweet Briar College from Closing
As we recently reported, the small college has come to the point of closure but many are upset by this development.
Susan Svrluga of the Washington Post.
Sweet Briar faculty join lawsuit seeking to stop the college from closing
A group of faculty and staff members at Sweet Briar College has filed a motion supporting a lawsuit that seeks to stop the school from closing, and warns that they plan further legal action.
The president of the small private women’s college in Virginia shocked faculty, students, staff and alumnae when he announced last month that the 114-year-old school would shut down forever at the end of August. Since then, supporters of the college have raised more than $5 million and mounted efforts on several fronts to stop the college from closing.
The faculty group also plans to file suit challenging the closing, according to the motion, in part because it claims James Jones was not properly elected to the position of president of the college, invalidating his leadership of the board toward closure.
They argue that the college leadership had no legitimate basis for terminating their employment, as officials provided no proof of financial exigencies.
The group of 84 faculty and 65 staff members filed a friend-of-the-court motion Monday supporting a lawsuit brought by Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer.
Bowyer has asked the court for an injunction, arguing in part that charitable funds have been misused, and that closing the college would violate the terms of the will under which it was founded.
Sweet Briar faculty join lawsuit seeking to stop the college from closing (The Washington Post)
Comments
I propose a new law: the “Sweetbriar Protection and Student Loan Repayment Act.”
In this new law, we tax the income of university endowments (e.g., Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford, etc) at the capital gains rate. Harvard made somewhere around $8 billion just on its investments this year, and at 20% that’s a nice chunk of change. The other major universities would contribute to this fund as well since their investments are also doing well.
A portion of the tax would be used to keep small colleges from closing (though with all the Federal regulation this law would require, it’s a poisoned apple). The rest would be used to cover the defaults in student loans.
State universities would avoid the tax by having the states show that they are doing similar things to hold down student defaults.
Liberals like high taxes? I have one for them right here…