The VT President could be seen to have behaved as he did because he was being accused of failing to act. And was then acting out of self interest.
In a large part I blame our fictional media. TV and movies present the appearance of either hyper-competance or selfish corruption among people in positions of power.
The great unwashed who have no real contact with such jobs and responsibilities come to believe this manufactured image.
The Powers That Be are assumed to be responsible for knowing the unknowable and predicting the future accordingly. If they do not do so, it must be due to incompetence or corruption.
From this, many people shape their world-view. Then they vote.....
Just my fevered thought....
Part of the job of a university president, and of the staff under him, is to protect the school (and in the case the taxpayers) from devastating financial liability. Our screwed up legal system is responsible for both the fact that a patently insane young man was permitted to stay on campus pretending to be a student for years until he snapped, and for the fact that it would be professionally irresponsible for any member of the university’s administration to admit to having made any mistakes that could have contributed to the carnage, no matter how much they might like say what mistakes they made and how sorry they are for having made them.