(The Center Square) — After boycotting the University of Virginia administration’s virtual town hall addressing questions about Saturday’s events at the school, some professors are hosting their own.
Levi Vonk, an assistant professor of global studies at the university, shared details on X.
“Yesterday UVA administration held a bogus ‘town hall’ where they didn’t let anyone speak and lied about the police violence on Saturday. So now UVA faculty are holding our own town hall to voice our concerns and discuss what must be done moving forward. Please share far & wide,” he wrote.
Vonk used X to publicly document and criticize the university’s response to protestors on Saturday, resulting in the arrest of 27 demonstrators by Virginia State Police.
Vonk isn’t alone in his feelings on the virtual town hall, hosted by the school’s president, chief operating officer, provost, vice president of student affairs and university police chief.
Associate Professor of History Eric Linstrum, who helped draft an open letter to the college demanding answers from the administration on how and why state police were called in to end the demonstration, also took to X with his assessment.
“Three days after the fact, we get a heavily scripted and tightly controlled ‘town hall’ (an abuse of the term and its democratic New England roots),” Linstrum wrote.
The event was entirely virtual, rather than a livestream of an in-person press conference, to open it up to more people, according to President Jim Ryan.
“I know a virtual town hall is not the same as an in-person one, but we’re holding this virtually because we anticipated a lot of people would like to participate and we want to make sure everyone interested can join us,” Ryan told viewers.
Viewers who wanted to ask questions had to register to submit questions and were not visible in real-time.
Jason Armesto of The Daily Progress reported that questions were carefully vetted and selected ahead of time.
“Participants were allowed to register to submit questions, but were not told how the university would determine which queries to pose. None of the questions submitted by The Daily Progress were asked or answered Tuesday,” Armesto wrote covering the town hall.
Critics of the university’s actions are still asserting – as they did before the town hall – that the university changed its policies on recreational tents mid-protest, ostensibly to be able to challenge and ultimately bring an end to the demonstration. Vonk shared a post from another UVA professor, Patrick Jackson, on X Tuesday evening, hours after the virtual event.
“For those who missed it, after the students in the UVA encampment found a document that clearly showed their tents were not breaking any university policies, UVA administrators secretly changed the policy and then immediately called the police to report an ‘infraction.’ Slimy!” wrote Vonk in his repost.
“Apparently UVA changed this document THIS MORNING! First version, downloaded about 9:15 AM, second version 11:13 AM,” Jackson, an assistant professor of medicine, had written the above two versions of the “UVA Environmental Health and Safety Fire Safety Tent Regulations” document.
The faculty town hall will be hosted on Zoom Thursday afternoon.
