DATE: Sunday, July 20, 1997                 TAG: 9707180009

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial

                                            LENGTH:   51 lines

TCC PRESIDENT LARRY L. WHITWORTH CONTEMPTUOUS DISMISSAL

If the Tidewater Community College board, composed of a dozen Hampton Roads citizens, were calling the shots, Larry L. Whitworth would stay on as president of the college.

Whitworth has served TCC and Hampton Roads very well. But Arnold R. Oliver, chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, seemingly couldn't care less that the TCC board has high regard for Whitworth and approves very strongly of what he has achieved for TCC in his six years as president. Whitworth's contract isn't being renewed.

Unfortunate and unwise. Tireless, articulate, intelligent, Whitworth has been a forceful advocate for an institution that readies thousands for the workplace, helps others already employed to acquire career-advancing skills and assists yet others toward four-year degrees.

Whitworth's savvy, spirited leadership rubbed Oliver the wrong way. The president's sin? Being an effective TCC champion. He is persuasive. He works well with the Hampton Roads power structure.

Whitworth has been a big asset to TCC. And to the region's commerce. And to community-building. He worked well with the TCC faculty, restructured curriculum and obtained technology responsive to students' needs. He upgraded standards. But the community's wishes don't matter: Whitworth is not to the chancellor's taste.

The spanking-new downtown Norfolk TCC campus, which served 2,000 students during the spring and expects to enroll 2,500 in the fall, almost surely would not have opened this year had Whitworth not been on the team pushing the plan to reality. He marched arm in arm with Norfolk's legislative delegation; business, professional and municipal-government leaders; and the TCC board toward the objective, which he had done so much to define.

His reward is to be booted. His eviction is a back of the hand to all who labored with him to bring the Norfolk campus into being, to expand TCC's Chesapeake campus, establish the TCC Visual Arts Center in downtown Portsmouth and enhance the Virginia Beach and Portsmouth campuses.

Like Northern Virginia Community College, TCC is underfunded by the state in order to subsidize community colleges in thinly populated areas. That's understandable. But since when is it a firing offense for a college president to lobby honorably, vigorously and successfully for his constituency?

Chancellor Oliver's lack of regard for the preferences and sensibilities of TCC's citizen-volunteer board and South Hampton Roads' leadership could not be clearer. Does what these public-spirited men and women want - that is, for Whitworth to be retained as president - count for nothing? Yes.

They have been ill-used. Whitworth has been ill-used. His abilities doubtless will be appreciated elsewhere. Hampton Roads will be the loser for being deprived of them.

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