I had no other option but to resign- Ex UBC President

Vancouver- Arvind Gupta, Former UBC president  has released a statement in which he calls the documents a “one-sided representation” of what happened in the months prior to his resignation. He criticized the release of hundreds of pages of documents related to his resignation last August.

The 861 pages of documents released Monday included meeting agendas, receipts, emails and the terms of Gupta’s resignation, but do not reveal why he stepped down. Emails show UBC board of governors chair John Montalbano wanted to have a “confidential discussion, not captured on email” with Gupta just days before board members received notice about a meeting where they would discuss the president’s resignation. Montalbano himself stepped down last October after an investigation into a professor’s claims that she was intimidated after writing a blog post suggesting Gupta lost a “masculinity contest” with the school’s leadership.

Gupta said in his statement that it became clear last summer that he “did not have the support of the full board and felt he had “no other option but to resign.” He said there was “never any formal review” of his performance, or outreach by the board to the broader university community. This, Gupta said, would have allowed both him and the UBC board to assess his first year accomplishments and the work that lay ahead.