Garrison
Bastress
MORGANTOWN - Several tenured professors have added their names to a growing list of school faculty and supporters who want West Virginia University President Mike Garrison to step down due to an ongoing academic scandal.
Eleven professors at the WVU College of Law sent a letter to Garrison after the president canceled a meeting with them.
In the letter, the faculty members say they want to speak to Garrison about his future and the role he has at the school. They say they have remained silent because Garrison is a graduate of the law school.
"We have been silent these many weeks out of respect for our relationship with you as an alumnus of this college," the letter says.
The letter goes on to say that the school's faculty is being ridiculed at academic conferences because of the scandal.
WVU has been in the national spotlight after a panel determined that the school gave Heather Bresch, daughter of Gov. Joe Manchin, a master's degree she did not earn.
The professors say Garrison's position, as the highest-ranking official at the university, calls for action.
"Whether or not you were directly or indirectly complicit in the fabrication of the degree and the accompanying grades, the presence of your top people in the decision-making process is causing the public and media to ask questions that simply will not go away," the letter says.
The professors that signed the letter are Gerald Ashdown, Robert Bastress, Charles DiSalvo, James Elkins, James Friedberg, Robert Lathrop, Patrick McGinley, James McLaughlin, Dale Olson, Judith Scully and Valorie Vojdik.