By Suzanne Tate
Opinion Page Editor / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: January 29, 2010

Seven months after coming off probation, Virginia Intermont College wants the public to believe the unbelievable – that its president’s surprise resignation Monday and the Thursday announcement that about 20 percent of the college workforce is being laid off is coincidence.

The news is too hard to swallow.

Faculty and students at this small, private college were caught off guard by the Monday announcement – via e-mail – that VI’s President Michael Puglisi had resigned. Ditto for the most of the larger Bristol community.

The second shoe dropped Thursday when VI announced it would cut almost 40 jobs – 30 full-time employees and six part-timers, some of them faculty members.

Puglisi apparently notified the college’s board of trustees he was leaving about a week ago or sometime last weekend, according to interim President Robert Rainwater. But Puglisi himself gave no public reason for his immediate resignation and has not responded to repeated press inquiries.

While neither Puglisi nor the college board are talking, it is obvious Puglisi did not plan to leave the college last week.

Read more on the opinion page of the Sunday, Jan. 31, edition of the Bristol Herald Courier.