A 60-day reprieve, with no endowment money spent on closure activities. That’s all Circuit Judge James Updike granted Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer in her suit to keep Sweet Briar College alive.
It was far from what Bowyer had sought — a permanent injunction against the board of directors from shutting down the 114-year-old all-women’s college in Amherst County and the replacement of the interim president and board with a special overseer — but there is, perhaps, a window of opportunity here for all parties to seize.
What would be the college’s final graduation is just weeks away, followed by what promises to be a flood of alumnae for the annual class reunions after that. Job termination notices to faculty and staff are being distributed. Students are investigating their options at other colleges and universities.
Now is the time for all parties to talk with each other … face to face in meetings about substantive issues, not in dueling news releases or social media postings. The future of a high-profile institution of higher education is at stake.
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That direct engagement is one element that has been missing from this affair ever since interim President James Jones dropped the bombshell of the college’s closure March 3. And perhaps in talking with each other, a path forward can be found.
At stake, too, is a major part of the economy in Amherst County and the Town of Amherst.
Sweet Briar is the second-largest employer in the county after the Central Virginia Training Center in Madison Heights. It’s one of the largest customers of the town’s utility system and, over the years, has benefited greatly from special financing deals with the town’s Industrial Development Authority.
Businesses in the town are heavily dependent on the college and the dollars it generates. Students dine at local restaurants, gas up their vehicles at local convenience stores and buy groceries at the local market. Employees of the college who live in the town or county pay local taxes, send their children to local schools and frequent local businesses. The college itself is a regional economic player, not just through its high-paying jobs and patronizing of local businesses for a variety of services, but as key component of marketing the region on the national economic development stage.
Amherst County and especially the town have been intimately intertwined with Sweet Briar since the college’s founding in 1901, mutually benefiting each other over the last century.
As town Mayor Paul Kilgore put it in a recent letter to college leaders, “[W]hat is good for our College partner is good for the Town.”
Indeed, the town has invested quite a bit in the college over the last 40 years.
In 1972, according to Kilgore, town and college leaders came together to save the college from what would likely have been overwhelming expenses related to modernization and upgrade of the college’s standalone water and sewer treatment system. The college is one of the largest sources of revenue for the utility system and future upgrades of that system have been committed to partly based on the revenues coming from the college. Throw in bond underwriting by the town’s IDA that made college building projects possible at greatly reduced costs, and it becomes obvious how much county and town taxpayers have invested in Sweet Briar over the years.
Sweet Briar has also been a culture and community asset of great value to the town and county. Concerts, plays, artistic exhibits and performances, national and international speakers and writers and just the general intellectual vigor the college community has injected into the greater community is beyond measure. College faculty and staff, over the years, have been leaders on the local School Board and Board of Supervisors, in local churches, with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and for any number of community groups and organizations. It is just impossible to attach a monetary value to that sort of contribution.
What could have caused a long-tenured institution such as Sweet Briar to suddenly announce its closure, especially in light of such projects as the $8.8 million renovation of the library? Who knows.
What we do know is that there is credible evidence presented by alumnae that there is a way forward for the college, that closure isn’t the only option. To that end, we say to the college’s president and its board, sit down and talk with the alumnae, Saving Sweet Briar Inc. and its accountants and attorneys and with government leaders. It’s your legal fiduciary duty to do all you can to preserve the institution and its mission.
Judge Updike has given you 60 days, but the clock is ticking.