The announcement in January that Tom Ross would no longer be the President of the UNC System as of early 2016 took many by surprise, including some members of the Board of Governors.

At the BOG meeting on January 16, it was announced that Tom Ross would be leaving his post at President of the 17-campus University System by January 3 of next year, or when a successor was named, whichever is later.

As it turns out, NC Policy Watch Investigative Reporter Sarah Ovaska says this decision appears to have come as a shock to many members of the very board Ross has been serving.

“There were several members that mentioned, ‘I didn’t know about this until Wednesday’ and the actual action happened on Friday,” she says. “It appears that this was a fairly quick-moving thing.”

Ovaska is getting that information from digging through an estimated 1,000 pages of e-mail correspondence between Ross and the board members acquired through a public information request filed for December of last year through February 2015.

“The information request I got didn’t necessarily tell us anything new about what happened,” Ovaska says, “but just reiterated those impressions that those of us that were at the meeting had.

“In that this is a fairly sudden move that came along, and a lot of the members of the Board of Governors really weren’t aware of the plans to oust President Ross until that week.”

Ovaska says in the days after the decision was made public there still seemed to be strong support for Ross from select portions of the 32-member board.

“A number of e-mails after that January meeting from several Board of Governor members saying, ‘I’m sorry this happened. You’re a great guy. You’ve done a great job for the University System, and we’re sorry to see you go,’” Ovaska says.

No concrete decision was ever handed down from the Board of Governors as to why Ross was being removed.

Chairman John Fennebresque would only praise Ross when announcing his firing, commending his work ethic, integrity, and saying that Ross’ age had nothing to do with the decision. Ross is 65 – the age that has seemingly been a cutoff point for previous System Presidents.

The search for a new President, meanwhile, goes forward with interviews for a search firm to navigate the process on Wednesday. The full Board of Governors will hold their next meeting on Friday.