Yup, that's my college...

And like a bolt from Heaven, great unintentional comedy doth strike me now, in my hour of most need...

To BU Alumni:

Throughout the BU presidential search commenced last year, we emphasized the importance of making the process inclusive and we have done a number of things to that end. We constituted a search committee that is representative of the campus. We extended an open invitation to meet with anyone from the BU community, and hundreds of people took us up on that offer and lent their advice. We attended meetings with dozens of student leaders as well as the Faculty Council and Faculty Assembly, and intend to meet with those faculty groups again and participate in a student forum this semester. We also retained an executive search firm whose network will carry our search across a very broad spectrum of potential candidates.

Today we are opening up one more line of communication to BU’s many constituencies, a presidential search website which you can find at www.bu.edu/presidentsearch. We hope you will use the site as a resource to access information about the search, share your views with us, and learn about the search committee’s progress. The site includes a section which covers the most commonly asked questions about the search along with answers to them. It provides names and background information on search committee members. Most important of all, it offers a “contact us” feature so that you can share your comments and suggestions about the search with the committee at any time.

We understand that the best possible candidates will not participate in the search unless it is conducted confidentially. The search committee is going to respect that, and as a result there will be periods of time when there is not a great deal of news to report. Nonetheless, as a graduate of BU you are an important part of the university community and it is essential that you have a voice in the search process at all times. This new site will ensure that.

Thanks, and we look forward to hearing from you.

David F. D’Alessandro
Chairman, Presidential Search Committee
Vice Chairman, BU Board of Trustees


A friggin' website to find a new president of Boston University? Can it REALLY be that hard to find a qualified individual to run this school that isn't a megalomaniacal control-freak or a sniveling Wormtail to John "He Who Shall Not Be Named" Silber? What's next, a posting on Craig's List? Mebbe a new elimination-style game show on ABC called "The Baccalaureate" wherein twenty-five qualified and tenured university professors try to wine and dine Mr. D'Alessandro into handing them a gilded rose, thereby choosing them as the next sham figurehead of a once distinguished institution of higher learning. At this point I'm thinking Silber might not be a bad choice...