Former First Lady Mary Easley was fired from her post as executive-in-residence today during an emergency meeting of the Board of Trustees.

Board of Trustees members voted unanimously in favor of terminating Easley’s contract.

“I believe we now have to move forward. I think to do so we have got to do everything we can to bring sunlight to this issue. I have therefore fully supported the BOT recommendation that we terminate our relationship with Mrs. Easley,” UNC President Erskine Bowles said in a press conference following the meeting.

The decision came hours after Chancellor James Oblinger announced his resignation. Provost Larry Nielsen and Board of Trustees Chairman McQueen Campbell resigned last month.

Bowles said he did not know how much it would cost the University to terminate Easley’s contract and that no talks with her lawyer had been conducted.

He also said he found about the salary retirement package for Nielsen Sunday and saw the e-mails dealing with the hiring of Easley at N.C. State Friday.

“They were delivered to me on Friday afternoon. Those e-mails made me feel sick. I had believed the chancellor,” Bowles said.

Oblinger said he did not remember the specifics surrounding the hiring of Easley after the provot’s resignation and continued to assert that until the e-mails were made public.

Bowles said he felt the situation would have been better if Oblinger had come clean from the beginning.

Board of Trustees Chairman Bob Jordan said the media was nitpicking, especially since there has been no criminal evidence surrounding the controversy in his opinion.

“Knowing what I know, I still don’t believe there was anything wrong in those e-mails,” Jordan said.

He said the University just needs to get out of the newspapers.

“I haven’t seen anything except maybe somebody didn’t use good judgement [that was wrong],” Jordan said.

Keep checking back with technicianonline.com and follow @ncsutechnician on Twitter for updates.

Agromeck Editor Emeritus John Cooper Elias contributed to this report.