U. of District of Columbia President Is Fired

The university’s Board of Trustees voted on Wednesday night to dismiss Allen L. Sessoms, who had been the institution’s president since 2008. The board’s chairwoman thanked Mr. Sessoms for his service but added that the board had “decided to go in a different direction.”

During his tenure, Mr. Sessoms spearheaded a reorganization that split the university into an open-enrollment community college and a four-year college with higher admissions standards and tuition rates. But last year an internal audit faulted the university for lax oversight of Mr. Sessoms’s spending, which had been criticized as excessive.

Alan Etter, a UDC spokesman, said that 11 trustees voted to terminate Sessoms and that two abstained. The identities of the two who abstained were not immediately known.

Crider and other trustees declined to answer questions about the decision after the meeting. Sessoms, who had been present when the trustees convened hours earlier, was not there when his firing was announced.

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