All meetings where budgetary matters are discussed need to be open to the public. If the board needs time to discuss items regarding personnel issues in private, fine. But when that conversation ends, the public has a right to come back in and listen to what these policy makers are thinking.

Making the public stand outside in the hall while the trustees meet in secret with senior administrators is shameful, disrespectful and possibly illegal.

We warned the trustees in an editorial back in November to not pull the same stunt that the Oakland University board pulled, by talking about budget issues in private.

Apparently, they didn’t listen.

Bad move.

Oakland University’s student newspaper, The Oakland Post, sued the trustees in circuit court. The paper’s initial suit wasn’t successful, but maybe it’s time to see if another judge would see things in a different light.

Whether the courts decide what the trustees did is legal or not, it still shouldn’t be done at all.

That is still my money, and the board is still discussing what to do with it without my input. At the very least, I have the right to sit in the same room and hear the discussion.

Trustee and former board chairwoman Melanie Reinhold Foster said anyone criticizing the board’s seemingly behind-closed-doors policy does make a valid point, but “there’s never any decisions made behind closed doors.”

Of course, we don’t know that because no one was there to make sure.

That, in essence, is the core reasoning for having Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

As students and citizens, we have a right to watch how our governmental bodies work and have the chance to take part in the democratic process.

This board, though, apparently feels it is above that law and it does not apply.

Deciding things in private, and meeting in public only to rubber-stamp whatever policies are on the agenda is a disservice to the students it claims to concern itself with.

Once the board left the informal session at 11:30 a.m., it spent 15 minutes on agenda items for the scheduled committee meetings, then adjourned for lunch.

Board members obviously had other things on their mind when they got back from lunch for the formal 1 p.m. meeting that lasted roughly an hour.

The board members were guests at the Lem Tucker Journalism Scholarship dinner that night at the Atheneum Hotel in downtown Detroit. I guess that’s why it’s good to not discuss things in public at meetings — that way the trustees could make it to the 6 p.m. reception on time, where a $125 a plate dinner awaited them.

I hope there won’t be a fancy dinner waiting for the trustees on July 8, when it is scheduled to meet next. At that meeting, the trustees are expected to decide on tuition rates, the proposed athletics fee and the women’s field hockey team’s lack of a playing surface for next fall.

Those tough decisions call for student input, explanation and a board that won’t rush through important points. Most importantly though, all of it should be done in public.

Chris Gautz is the editor of Central Michigan Life. Send comments to editor@cm-life.com.