Gwendolyn Boyd is the new president of Alabama State University in the state capital of Montgomery.
She will receive a salary of $300,000 each year and a fairly standard fringe benefit package. She will also get $1,000 per month for the use of her personal vehicle and up to $10,000 in moving expenses. She will also get to — and, in fact, will be required to — live on campus in the president’s home.
However, as The Washington Post reports, Boyd, who is single, will have to conduct any long-term romantic relationships (or short-term romantic relationships, or one-night flings, or whatever) outside her new on-campus residence.
Boyd’s two-year contract states, in relevant part:
For so long as Dr. Boyd is President and a single person, she shall not be allowed to cohabitate in the President’s residence with any person with whom she has a romantic relation.
This contract language is highly unusual. However, Boyd, 58, has gone on record as saying the clause doesn’t bother her.
“I do live alone, so it was not problematic for me,” she said, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Boyd and officials from the public, taxpayer-funded, historically black school signed the contract on Jan. 2. The Birmingham News posted the contract in its entirety here.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley showed up for the unanimous vote by Alabama State’s board of trustees. (He’s also a trustee, by virtue of his position as governor.) He called Boyd an “excellent choice,” according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
Boyd is an engineer by training. She attended Alabama State as an undergrad, and she remains an enthusiastic supporter of the school.
After graduating, Boyd went on to earn a master’s degree from Yale University. She has worked for the last three decades at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. She’s also an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Alabama State had been mired in controversy prior to the selection of Boyd as the school’s new president. That controversy, which involved a forensic accounting among much else, is far from over.
The last ASU president, Joseph Silver, didn’t last very long on the job. He was ousted, he claims, after he cast doubt on certain policies in place that he said did not benefit the school.
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