by: Lee Cronin
The Rotunda has fallen
Back on July 6, The Schilling Show page ran an amazingly comprehensive review of the many ways Mr. Jefferson’s university has declined over author, Jud Crucis’s lifetime.
Some of those points intersected with my commentary of June 27 as a Schilling Show guest editorial.
Now, with the events of just these past few days, we are witnessing an even deeper revelation of even further malfeasance.
Actions which are indeed a matter of life and death.
I had not had the opportunity to read the letter submitted by the 128 doctors and staff, but upon having done so, one has to ask: if UVA Medical Center is truly one of the top ten facilities in America, what must the environment of the bottom ten facilities be like?
By any honest measure, the University of Virginia is not what it was meant to be.
What Thomas Jefferson built as a beacon of enlightenment thought, public virtue, and intellectual freedom has in our time become something else entirely—a broken institution teetering under the weight of its own betrayal.
Two letters—one from the Deans dated July 4, the other from 128 physicians dated September 5—offer an unflinching portrait of what has transpired beneath the famous Rotunda.
Together, they form an indictment of leadership failure, ethical decay, and administrative arrogance that has left Jefferson’s University a hollow, conflicted, and compromised version of what it once aspired to be.
Let us say what too many have, for far too long, been afraid to say: Mr. Jefferson’s University has been corrupted.
A Leadership Vacuum Wrapped in Desperation
The July 4 letter from the Deans is nothing short of a cry for help.
With President Jim Ryan’s sudden resignation, the University’s academic leaders scramble to address what they call “unprecedented confusion” from donors, faculty, students, and staff.
Pledges have been pulled.
New hires are reconsidering (rightfully so under present conditions) whether they wish to hitch their star to a currently sinking ship.
Campaigns were suspended at the end of the fiscal year.
Yet, while the letter calls for accountability and transparency, it implicitly defends the very man whose leadership oversaw this collapse.
This is illogical, absurd and reprehensible.
To even entertain the idea of reinstalling Jim Ryan, or giving him another position of influence, is an insult to every Virginian who still believes in institutional integrity.
If anything, what we now know disqualifies him from any employment within the University—much less UVA leadership.
Good intentions mean nothing when surrounded by such failure.
A culture of fear, retaliation, and compromise- and what we now know?
Thanks to the September 5 letter of no confidence, signed by over 128 faculty in the UVA Physicians Group, we now have documented testimony of:
- Suppression of patient safety concerns
- Retaliation against whistleblowers and faculty
- Academic rank abuses used to intimidate dissent
- Ethics violations in billing and credentialing
- Bullying of medical residents
- Weaponization of “ASPIRE” values to punish staff
Let that sink in for a moment if you will.
This isn’t hearsay.
This is an emergency declaration from those entrusted with life-and-death care—a moral alarm bell rung in desperation because every internal avenue has utterly failed or been suppressed.
To call this merely a “leadership transition” is delusion.
This is an institutional meltdown.
This is a betrayal of Jefferson’s vision.
Thomas Jefferson’s dream was not a bureaucracy of backroom deals and administrative intimidation.
It was not a place where truth is buried, dissent is punished, and institutional power protects itself at all costs.
His dream and vision was for a university devoted to freedom of thought, public responsibility, and the cultivation of reason.
His creation now stands in shambles.
We hear endlessly about Jefferson’s personal flaws—his contradictions, his limitations.
Yet, I must submit the obvious inquiry: where is the equal scrutiny for those who have dragged his legacy into the mud?
One must ask: would Mr. Jefferson even recognize the place he built?
Would he call it a university—or a machine of compliance?
The final factor: money
Ultimately, this all comes down to what now rules everything else in our society: money.
Donors are speaking with their wallets.
Endowments are being reevaluated.
Capital campaigns are on life support, understandably so.
Therefore, the question looming before us now is a massive one: Who is more serious about their cause—those who believe in accountability and reform, or those who seek to preserve the status quo?
This is the reckoning.
Not just of leadership.
Not just of politics.
It is a reckoning of conscience.
It will be measured in dollars, yes, but also in courage.
Who will walk away from convenience and fight for principle?
I find it ironic and poetic.
Jefferson, who mistrusted banks and detested concentrated wealth, is now watching from history’s window as his university is torn apart by the very forces he feared most.
His feud with Hamilton—over debt, power, and who gets to control the future—echoes today not in Congress, but on his “Grounds” and beneath his dome.
It is decision time
The time for politeness is over.
The time for “waiting and seeing” has passed.
We know what’s happened.
We’ve seen the letters.
We’ve heard the voices.
We’ve read the damning evidence.
Now comes the choice: to reclaim Jefferson’s University or surrender it entirely.
To the Board of Visitors, faculty, alumni, parents, and students: you are now accountable.
History is watching.
Virginia is watching.
Will you cleanse this house?
Or will you let it crumble further?
Jefferson’s University is bleeding.
It can be saved—but only if truth, courage, and moral clarity are given their rightful place once again.
Anything less…is complicity.
