By secretly removing the cross from the altar of the College of William & Mary’s 275- year-old Wren Chapel last October, the school’s president, Gene Nichols, has created a major crisis at the second-oldest campus in the nation.
W&M is perhaps America’s highest-ranked college with the lowest endowment. Nichol action caused an angry rift in the college community, alumni and friends, and slammed the brakes on a much-needed fundraising program. Another university president recently called Nichol unilateral action “a multimillion dollar mistake.”
Nichol consulted with no one in his action. His response to a Freedom of Information request for any correspondence prior to his action by anyone objecting to the cross’s presence in the chapel could only find a single document from a personal friend.
Nichol’s action was first revealed when the college paper found a housekeeping memo by one of the curators of the Wren Building where the chapel was located explaining Nichol’s new policy. Oddly enough, the other colleges founded in colonial America, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia and Rutgers, all have crosses in their chapels.
An Internetpetition — www.savethewrencross.org — asking Nichol to restore the cross to the chapel has received more than 15,000 signatures, while another defending his action is nearing 2,000 signatures. Hundreds of letters of protest have poured into Nichol’s office and several dozen articles have appeared as news and op-eds throughout the nation’s mainstream media.
Nichol’s damage control policy in this firestorm is simple. He hides. He refuses to answer key questions raised by his bizarre conduct and he prevents anyone else in his administration from answering them, either.
Hundreds of letters and phone calls from concerned alumni and journalists have gone unanswered for four months. Why? Nichols is president of a public college. Larry Summers got into hot water with one of his faculties at a private university, Harvard, that eventually led to his resignation, but he never hid from the public and media.
Nichol’s wife, Glenn George, is a law professor at William & Mary and previously served as general counsel at the University of North Carolina. There, she received an injunction from a federal District Court enjoining UNC from discriminating against nearly a dozen Christian student groups on campus. Professor George refuses to answer e-mails or accept telephone calls from this author on the present controversy.
Nichol pretends to be fascinated with what he claims are the key questions of how William & Mary can be “great” and “public.” But greatness requires character and Nichol’s evasions are beginning to pile up noticeably at the college with the first honor code in America. Reportedly, he has threatened to resign if his Wren Cross action is overruled, yet when twice asked if this was true, he refused to answer.
If Nichol cares about the “public” responsibility of William & Mary, he can start taking some responsibility himself and be an open and responsive president. A member of the board of visitors toldme he returned my recent call because “I always return calls from the press” and because “you are an alum and I assume you have as much the college’s interest at heart as I do.”
President Nichol may profit by his example.
Journalist and editor Thomas Lipscomb is a proud graduate of the College of William & Mary.
