Thursday, November 18, 2010

Williams: VCU president a keeper or a clunker?

The video above is the Richmond Times-Dispatch's columnist Michael Paul Williams' rant on the Rao row at VCU. Is Michael Rao, the man VCU hired last year to follow Eugene Trani as president of the university, already on his way out?

Click here to read the rather strange "confidentiality agreement" Rao wants his underlings to sign.


3 comments:

J. Tyler Ballance said...

There is nothing at all "strange" about having employees sign a confidentiality agreement, these days, especially in such a litigious society in which we live.

Dr. Rao and his wife are being sabotaged by underlings who simply refuse to changee with the times.

The old Tranni corrupt, political machine, days are over. No more fake degrees for the Negro police chief, no more backroom deals with the cancer merchants.

Dr. Rao is heroically trying to drag VCU and Richmond into the Twenty-first Century, while his detractors simply are doing all that they can to cling to their old, corrupt, backroom dealing ways.

F.T. Rea said...

Thank you for commenting.

That's a point of view I haven't heard before. I had gathered from my reading and conversations with others that this particular confidentiality agreement went a little further than what is customary.

On the other hand, I don't get around all that much, these days.

Scott said...

"The old Tranni corrupt, political machine, days are over."

This is the hope, that Rao will institute reforms that will allow VCU to continue to improve, while at the same time placate critics in the Richmond community (of which I have been one).

http://www.oregonhill.net/2010/10/09/two-years-later-still-waiting-for-positive-step-by-vcu/

It's not easy to make big changes within the fishbowl that the VCU President's office has become. I wish Rao all the luck in that respect. But, yeah, secrecy agreements don't sound good, especially when you consider Trani's dealings with Big Tobacco.

It will be interesting to see where Rao's vision meets or diverges from the Board of Visitors.