Gene R. Nichol was the kind of college president who visited the freshman dorms, talking constitutional law and taking questions on all sorts of subjects.

He was the kind of guy who helped an incredulous student haul a heavy trunk into her dormitory, leaving her thinking, "That wasn't really the president, was it?"

So says Zach Pilchen, president of the Student Assembly at the College of William and Mary, in the aftermath of Nichol's ouster as president.

"This is someone who really touched a chord with the student body," said Pilchen, 20, a junior from Arlington County. "I hope the next college president makes as much of a concerted effort to reach out to the students as he did."

And as he did with faculty members such as Francis Tanglao-Aguas, an assistant professor of theater.

"With President Nichol at the helm, I felt much safer and more welcome and encouraged in my duties and obligations as a professor," said Tanglao-Aguas. "I am the only Filipino-American faculty member at the College of William and Mary."

He arrived at the college with Nichol and felt encouraged to present Asian performance styles, including a Hindu epic. "The courses I teach were never before taught," he said. Tanglao-Aguas and other faculty members internationalized and diversified course offerings at the Williamsburg school, which was chartered in 1693.

Pilchen and Tanglao-Aguas say the college's board of visitors needs to be transparent regarding its treatment of Nichol. "They need to come down here as soon as possible," Pilchen said, "because the campus is really hurting right now."

Nichol, who arrived at William and Mary in July 2005, was done in by two manufactured controversies: the Wren cross and the Sex Workers' Art Show.

Few students at this school of 7,500 got overheated over the cross brouhaha, which set off a segment of vocal alumni and initiated the countdown to Nichol's demise. But Pilchen, who is Jewish, appreciated Nichol's change in policy regarding the display of the cross in the chapel.

"For me, I thought the decision was really fantastic," he said -- especially coming from a Christian college president in the South.

The sex-workers show, sponsored and paid for by students, sealed Nichol's fate.

"Not only among students and faculty, but staff as well, the sentiment here is very much one of outrage, disappointment, devastation and also disillusionment," Pilchen said.

"If you put up four issues -- the state budget, mental health, payday lending and the Sex Workers' Art Show -- there's one of those that clearly doesn't belong in the discussion of the operation of the state of Virginia."

In the Richmond statehouse, "They're just trying to use these political issues to get people riled up so they can get a couple of extra votes, so they can look like the valiant white knight that saved higher education." But the reality is that state budget cuts that freeze faculty salaries will do far more damage to the universities, Pilchen said.

Particularly this one, which has left the William and Mary family in a lurch.

Tanglao-Aguas wonders what it all means from an ideological standpoint. "I have a sinking feeling," he said. And he's not alone.

"We're trying to hold it together."
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.