Fired Va. Tech rector says he won’t attend June 2 board meeting

Despite previously refusing to resign after Gov. Abigail Spanberger fired him as Virginia Tech’s rector, John G. Rocovich Jr. said Saturday he does not plan to attend Tuesday’s quarterly meeting of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

Spanberger wrote in a May 27 letter to Rocovich, a Roanoke County-based attorney, that his conduct “violated the Code of Conduct for Commonwealth Appointees to Boards, Authorities, & Commissions, the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors’ Code of Ethics and the governing statutes requiring board members to act in accordance with the best interests of Virginia Tech.”

Spanberger then appointed Dominion Energy Virginia President Ed Baine, whose term on the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors was set to end June 30, to complete Rocovich’s term, which ends June 30, 2027. According to the governor’s office, the board members will elect a new rector.

Governors are the only officials in Virginia allowed to remove members from the state’s public university boards, which have hiring and firing power over institutions’ presidents.

Following that, Rocovich responded with his own four-page letter, first reported by Cardinal News. In it, Rocovich declined to resign as rector.

“I was appointed to serve a term, I have served that term faithfully, and I intend to fulfill my obligations to the students, faculty and people of Virginia,” Rocovich stated in his May 28 letter addressed to state Secretary of the Commonwealth Candi Mundon King.

Reached at his home Saturday, Rocovich ended a brief interview after stating he does not plan to attend the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors meeting scheduled for June 2.

The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

In his May 28 letter, Rocovich, a 1966 Virginia Tech graduate and chairman of law firm Moss & Rocovich, stated he received a call from King’s office asking that he resign as rector and as a member of Virginia Tech’s board of visitors. He later received the May 27 letter from Spanberger.

“I found that call and the subsequent letter deeply offensive, legally unsupported and wholly inconsistent with the Governor’s own publicly-stated principles regarding the proper relationship between the executive branch and the governance of Virginia’s public universities,” Rocovich wrote in his response.

In her letter to Rocovich, Spanberger did not specify how Rocovich, who was appointed by Republican former Gov. Glenn Youngkin, allegedly violated the codes and statutes listed.

However, Virginia U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine voiced concern in April that Virginia Tech President Tim Sands may have been forced to step down so that a new president could be selected before Spanberger was due to fill seats on the university’s board July 1.

“I think there is a desire by certain members on that board to force him out,” Kaine said of Sands during an April 10 news conference.

Sands, who took office in 2014, announced in April he planned to step down in coming months and intended to stay in office until a successor was in place.

The Virginia Tech Board of Visitors is scheduled to hold a meeting of its presidential search committee, which includes the full board of visitors, Tuesday, June 2, at 3 p.m.

In his letter, Rocovich noted that he made a commitment to Spanberger that her new appointees to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, whose terms begin July 1, would be included on the presidential search committee.

Former Gov. George Allen appointed Rocovich to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors in 1997. He served through 2005 and as rector from 2002 to 2004. He served on the board again from 2010 to 2014. Youngkin appointed Rocovich to another board term in 2023.

According to the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors bylaws, a rector may serve a maximum of two one-year terms. However, the board made an exception for Rocovich to serve a third term in 2025.