This could be an important day at a trustees meeting at Gardner-Webb University in the foothills town of Boiling Springs, where distress from the community, faculty, student, alumni and donors has been roiling for weeks.

As noted in this space a couple of weeks ago, The Shelby Star, in a remarkable series of stories, has captured the regrettable drama: first the report that university president Christopher White (also a Baptist minister) had intervened in the refiguring of a grade point average for a star student-athlete after the student had repeated a course he had failed because of a cheating incident. After the recalculation (there's something of a semantic dispute over what exactly to call it), the student, a basketball player, was eligible for the next season, which brought the school a championship. White said he had acted out of fairness to the student; he said the young man had been given incorrect advice on how to improve his grade. The National Collegiate Athletics Association will investigate the episode.

Then The Star plowed on: White received an overwhelming vote of no-confidence from the faculty; the trustees' leaders declined to dismiss White, demoted gutsy administrators who had dared to speak against him, faced a near-revolution by faculty, students, alumni and parents, ultimately saw White resign, and continued to insist they were in the right.

But that wasn't all. Then came news that the trustees had settled quite the departure package on the president. Said The Star: White is going to get more than $600,000 in payment of his contract, a Lincoln Town Car, a $500,000 life insurance policy and health insurance with premiums paid by the university for three years. In addition, the university apparently intends for a time to pay White's dues at three country clubs.

Wow. That's something coming from a small Baptist school.

Not to mention it's a lot of country clubs for a preacher.

Should anyone think the NCAA investigation or the events that led to it will simply disappear or be forgotten or are not really all that significant...well, let's run that one past someone who knows a few things about the subject. He was co-chairman of the Knight Commission on college athletics, the group that over a number of years conducted the most thorough examination of ethical issues in college athletics there has ever been. He also happens to be the most respected figure in higher education in North Carolina over the last half-century.

When we spoke, University of North Carolina President Emeritus William Friday had this to say of the situation: "The Gardner-Webb controversy clearly manifests the price we pay for the current state of intercollegiate athletics in our country today. It is sad indeed."

Sad is the word for it, make no mistake, and if that doesn't get the attention of trustees, perhaps nothing will. So let's say it again: A step toward healing could be taken today. Those administrators and faculty members who were demoted or felt the need to depart could be restored. And the trustees could apologize -- profusely -- to the university community, and engage in a little soul-searching as to how all this was handled, or mishandled.

The seriousness of the trauma cannot be summed up better than it was in a letter from community leaders to the trustees, wherein these leaders were passionate, inspiringly so, about dear old Gardner-Webb: In advocating the return of the "exiled" deans and faculty, these people wrote: "The unthinkable is now thinkable: the closing of Gardner-Webb's doors. We are not the only ones who can, tragically, envision the demise of the university. This concern is now being voiced within and without the university community. Comparisons to 'Enron' and 'WorldCom' are heard in the conversations of the university constituents. Donors have also expressed their grave concerns in public and private conversations. The university will reap the seeds of restoration or the seeds of destruction by the actions you take on Oct. 31....This is not time to save face; it is time to save Gardner-Webb University."

The lesson here: Be careful when you rile Baptists.

A final thought for now. In a letter to the editor which appeared on this page a week ago Sunday, a trustee of Gardner-Webb defended his board and White, which was fine, and then reckoned that my grandfather (president of what is now Gardner-Webb from 1932-35, while serving as minister of the local Baptist church) would have supported the trustees. I have to stand up for Granddaddy here, for there are few parallels I can find to his tenure and what's been going on lately: He never owned a Lincoln, never belonged to a country club, and...because the Depression had threatened to close many private colleges, he served as president without pay.