With Sweet Briar College (SBC) scheduled to close in Aug., the Virginia Supreme Court will hear an appeal to block that from happening.
The appeal comes from a lawsuit filed in a Circuit Court, which declined to slow SBC's closing. One of multiple similar suits, the Associated Press reported, Amherst County Attorney Ellen Bowyer contends a court should approve SBC's closing.
The 114-year-old all-women's college announced its impending closure in early March, citing financial hardships that do not have a reasonable solution in sight. SBC maintains they are a corporation and the decision to close is theirs alone, whereas Bowyer called the school a trust that would require a court's approval to close.
James F. Jones Jr., SBC's president, said the school's financial issues included heavy debt, maintenance on the campus and a lucrative endowment that was mostly restricted from use to address the problems. On top of it all, the school's enrollment is in decline.
According to the AP, a group of SBC alumnae, faculty and current students since banded together to raise funds and challenge the school's closing. The group has raised $12 million in pledges to address SBC's financial hardships.
"People will be reluctant to donate property if they think the charitable corporation to which they donate it to can simply use if for some other purpose other than what they wanted," Nancy A. McLaughlin, a charitable trust expert at the University of Utah College of Law, told the AP. "Whether it has truly become impossible or impractical to run Sweet Brian is an issue for the court to resolve, in my opinion."
Central to the case will be the Uniform Trust Code, a law Va. and 29 other states adopted. The state's Supreme Court Justices will have to comb through all the code's aspects to determine whether SBC is a trust or a corporation.
