The immediate impetus for the plan to sell paintings from Randolph College’s Maier Museum has ceased to exist: The Lynchburg, VA, institution yesterday announced:
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) will announce today its decision to remove Randolph College from warning….However, SACS will monitor the College in the upcoming year, and we will be required to submit another report on our financial plan in the fall of 2008….The College’s plan for financial stability includes…a substantial infusion into the endowment.
Opponents of the paintings’ sale interpret the last sentence to mean that the college may still try to sell some of its art to create that “substantial infusion.”
Anne Yastremski, executive director of Preserve Educational Choice, the group opposing the sales, yesterday declared:
This decision by SACS indicates that…the sale of irreplaceable educational and cultural resources, like the art in the Maier Museum, [was] completely unnecessary to remove the SACS warning.