University of Virginia President Jim Ryan would like you to know that he found the entire episode on Grounds this past Saturday “upsetting, frightening, and sad.” Only imagine how he might have felt if he had been there.
But no one saw hide nor hair of Mr. Ryan Saturday, even though his official residence at Carr’s Hill is steps away from the epicenter of the violence that unfolded as state police encircled and then raided a quiet and, frankly, meager attempt at a protest on a soggy patch of grass by the University Chapel.
In the midst of the chaos, a faculty member telephoned me. Over the cries and chants of the crowd in the background, she told me she had one question for me: “Where is Jim Ryan?”
I told her I was trying to figure that out myself, that my reporters had tried in vain to get some sort of communication from his office. I promised her I would find out.
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My own calls and emails to the president’s office went unanswered throughout the afternoon. When I was informed that one of my reporters who was covering the conflict from a safe distance alongside other members of the media was pepper-sprayed in the face by a state trooper, I decided to try the personal number of a university communications official I’ve now known for the better part of a decade. Even that call was not picked up.
I did leave a voicemail, however, demanding, not requesting, a statement, a sign of life, something from the office of the president.
Mr. Ryan delivered a statement to the public two hours later.
In it, the president suggests that the two dozen or so rain-soaked demonstrators arrested on Grounds Saturday threatened the “physical safety of our community.” Their crime, at least according to the university, was not their support for the Palestinian people or their opposition to the Israeli forces in Gaza; the demonstrators had erected tents without a permit.
Mr. Ryan also wrote that “individuals unaffiliated with the University” had joined the protest and “presented some safety concerns.”
His 654-word statement makes no more mention of these unaffiliated individuals or the disparity between university “policy” forbidding tents and university “guidance” permitting them. It also makes no mention of where he was Saturday.
So I’m left wondering:
When the university quietly changed its “guidance” so that it matched its “policy” prohibiting tents on Grounds without a permit Saturday morning, where was Jim Ryan?
When the order came down and the state police were deployed to break up the encampment of protesters, where was Jim Ryan?
When his own students were being dragged off Grounds, where was Jim Ryan?
When the police turned on the crowd of supporters, onlookers and media , backing them into the street and pepper-spraying them, where was Jim Ryan?
I will admit, I have only ever been offered an audience with Mr. Ryan once. Last year, I was told that I could join him on a run; I am told he is a runner. I politely declined and expressed that as editor of the newspaper of record in the city where Mr. Ryan is employed, perhaps we would both be more comfortable indoors, sitting in chairs, wearing suits with a table between us. My invitation, like my calls Saturday, went unanswered.
I’ll be less polite now. I don’t want to go on a run with Mr. Ryan. I don’t want to go on a run with anyone. I want answers.
Earlier this year, Mr. Ryan was among the university officials celebrating the renaming of the school’s main library to honor the legacy of Edgar Shannon. Mr. Shannon, the university’s fourth president, shepherded the school through some trying times, including the May Days protests exactly 54 years ago.
University of Virginia students at the time were incensed by the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. The anger is understandable, as many of them stood a chance of being sent there themselves.
Those students were far less civil than the demonstrators protesting Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza today. They launched a strike, attempted to shut down the entire university, occupied Maury (now Warner) Hall and even marched on Carr’s Hill and threatened to burn it to the ground while the Shannon family was inside.
It is hard to imagine anyone in May of 1970 wondering, “Where is Edgar Shannon?” amid all of this. He was at Carr’s Hill telling protesters he shared their concerns, he was in Old Cabell Hall leading a memorial service for the protesters who had died at Kent State, he was on the steps of Alderman (now Shannon) Library listening to protesters' demands, he was addressing thousands of protesters on the university’s Lawn — where he would announce his decision to personally write to President Richard Nixon in support of their cause.
I know where Edgar Shannon was. I know where he is. He’s buried next to his wife under a modest gravestone in the University of Virginia Cemetery.
I still don’t know where Jim Ryan is.
But I made a promise to a member of his faculty this past Saturday that I would find out. And I will. Because in the words of the university's founder, Thomas Jefferson, "here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead."