The Virginia State University Board of Visitors will meet on Friday, roughly a week after the legal team representing six professors fired late last year filed discrimination complaints against the university with the Virginia Attorney General’s Office of Civil Rights.
Faculty leaders have recommended the instructors, dubbed The Fired Six, be reinstated and cited policy violations in the “reorganization” process that led to their terminations.
Virginia State University faces questions after firing six agriculture research experts
VSU’s firing of the Agricultural Research Station faculty members drew heavy criticism and prompted questions about how the institution could remove tenured faculty members from their offices.
In May, a VSU Faculty Senate subcommittee found that the terminations, carried out by deans and human resource managers, violated the university’s termination authority policy, making them unauthorized and illegitimate.
The policy states that only officials at the vice presidential level or higher have the legal authority to dismiss staff and notify them of their release.
The committee has since determined that the university should restore the professors’ jobs and pay them lost wages.
VSU did not respond to questions about the findings or if it would act on the subcommittee’s recommendation.
Vitalis Temu, one of the fired professors, said VSU’s Board of Visitors, which is responsible for formally discussing and approving any major academic restructuring of university departments, had yet to respond to or take up the findings or recommendations made by his former colleagues, nearly four months after they were published.
“This is a shame for the university,” said Temu.
The controversial VSU dismissals followed federal government changes to agricultural research funding, policy priorities, and USDA operations..
In 2000, VSU was also the subject of another investigation involving the treatment of faculty members by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).
Following that investigation, AAUP concluded the university violated academic due process and principles of tenure in dismissing two professors when it improperly changed and applied post-tenure review procedures, and placed the burden on the professors to prove they should be retained.
The school also failed to provide the faculty participation and procedural protections required for dismissal of tenured faculty, the AAUP probe found.
Background on the firings
The six faculty members were cut from VSU starting Dec. 16, after being called into individual meetings to discuss the research station’s transformational efforts.
Instead, at the meeting they learned their research programs were being sunset and their jobs were ending immediately.
The former professors said they declined to sign severance agreements at the meeting, largely because they didn’t have sufficient opportunity to review the documents. They said university personnel warned them they would lose any severance if they refused.
When they refused to sign, they were escorted off campus, required to surrender all items belonging to the university like equipment, identification and keys, and issued trespass warnings.
In February, following a rally for the fired faculty members, a university spokeswoman said VSU made “programmatic adjustments” in the College of Agriculture to align research and operations with the university’s strategic goals.
She said personnel matters are confidential and that the institution does not comment on individual employment actions.
More details of the Faculty Senate subcommittee’s findings
In addition to determining that the deans and HR staff who notified the professors of their terminations weren’t qualified to do so, the school’s Faculty Senate developed several recommendations for recourse and future action.
The group’s subcommittee recommended that the institution issue a formal apology, provide financial compensation if the institution cannot return overdue pay, and engage in a conversation with the faculty members to discuss the situation.
Joshua Erlich, the attorney representing the fired faculty members, said his clients are proud to have been vindicated by the faculty committee.
“VSU used this false reorganization as a pretext to terminate respected members of the VSU academic community, marching them out without time to pack up their offices, say farewell to their colleagues, or transition their research,” Elrich said.
“VSU’s conduct was illegal, destructive, and disrespectful. The Fired Six greatly appreciate this first step towards vindication and look forward to being made whole by VSU, whether through settlement or in court.”
