AU Board of Trustees Chair Leslie Bains resigned last night amidst what she called an attempt by her fellow trustees to derail scrutiny of AU President Benjamin Ladner, according to a letter her attorney forwarded to two student leaders.
Bains's letter, which The Eagle received anonymously, said pro-Ladner members of the Board called for her resignation this weekend in "yet another attempt to distract the Board" from addressing Ladner's fate at the university, scheduled for discussion at a meeting today.
"A very small, yet mean-spirited, group of Trustees on this Board have disregarded their fiduciary obligations to be stewards of the university," Bains said. "A vocal minority ... have consistently parroted the Ladner line, and introduced irrelevant issues aimed at distracting a majority of the Board from what I and many others believe are serious failings by Dr. Ladner."
Several reporters and roughly 30 students and faculty members gathered outside the meeting today while deans, professors and student leaders reiterated statements of no confidence to the trustees inside Butler Board Room.
"We told them everything we've heard from you, specifically that President Ladner should go without a severance package, the Board should be restructured and AU is still a strong university," Student Government President Kyle Taylor said to those gathered as he left the meeting. Taylor said the Board was focusing on Ladner, not Bains.
School of International Service professor and Center for Global Peace director Abdul Aziz Said told student protestors the Board knew their stance. "I will do everything I can to support the resolution of this crisis," Said said.
Around 8 p.m. last night, Bains called Megan Linehan, an organizer of last week's anti-Ladner protest and a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, to personally announce her resignation, followed by a phone call to Taylor. Both students received copies of Bains's letter of resignation.
"A certain contingent of the board was going to highjack [the meeting] and make it about her, so she wanted to preempt that and completely take it off the table," Linehan said. "She really wanted to emphasize to me, as a student, that she wasn't abandoning us; that it was a last ditch stand to make the meeting about what it was supposed to be about."
Bains was not present at today's Board meeting. Although her letter indicated a majority of the Board will likely vote to remove Ladner, it said she hopes the Board "will stand firm and reject any attempt to make an unnecessary and unjustified severance payment."
Bains, an AU graduate, told Linehan she was upset about no longer being able to reside over the board, saying she has served on many boards and knows "how things are done. It shouldn't have to be this difficult."
"She was pretty upset but she was also confident that the students wouldn't let her down," Linehan said. "I promised her that we'd be out here today, and we are."
The letter called for pro-Ladner Board members to resign and reiterated hopes the Board will consider Bains' recently issued 14-point Board improvement plan, calling for greater communication, more transparency and student and faculty representation on the Board.
