Governor Spitzer’s failure to reappoint one of the most active and respected members of the State University Board of Trustees, Candace U. deRussy, sends a disappointing message for those with an eye out for the future of the state system. Ms. deRussy is a scholar with a doctorate in French. She was appointed to the board by former Governor Pataki 12 years ago. Since that time, no trustee has been more vocal in shaking the status quo. Ms. deRussy is frequently the only dissenting or abstaining vote on a board that often seems perfectly willing to “go along and get along.” Mr. Pataki soon found that he got a lot more than he bargained for.

Few, if any, trustees keep a closer eye on the budget, nor is any other trustee more protective of the rights of students and faculty in the area of diversity – that is intellectual diversity, a concept under attack by advocates of the political correctness so common in many of our nation’s universities. Schools applying for charters, one of the powers of the trustees, knew that their applications were being read, and evaluated by Ms. deRussy. Surely on a board of this size there is room for a voice like Ms. deRussy’s.

Ironically, it is said that Mr. Spitzer is replacing Ms. deRussy with a former state comptroller, H. Carl McCall, a man whose judgment the governor himself had reason to question. Mr. McCall was the chairman of the committee of the New York Stock Exchange who signed off on exchange chairman Richard Grasso’s “excessive compensation” package that seemed to concern Mr. Spitzer so much when he was still attorney general and is the subject of ongoing litigation. Whatever one thinks of Mr. McCall’s role at the Stock Exchange, or his tenure as president of the old Board of Education, he certainly is unlikely to play the role on the SUNY board that Ms. deRussy did.