Board of Trustees must not keep any more secrets
The CMU Board of Trustees should put its best foot forward with regard to students, the media and the public during its first meeting of the academic year.
In the past two years, trustees have approved the College of Medicine and appointed University President George Ross at meetings without announcing the intention to do so or listing these on the agenda prior to the meetings.
This behavior skirts on the edges of what is permitted by the Open Meetings Act and projects an enmity and antagonism toward both the media and interested or involved members of the university and community.
The board needs to stop trying to “pull one over” on the people affected by its decisions and be open and honest with how they are steering the future of this public institution.
These major decisions were made essentially without the opportunity for public input or dissent, when the purpose of public bodies being required by law to meet in public is to allow for that kind of input. It takes power away from the students and the taxpayers that fund this university.
The search process for a university president is exempt from the Open Meetings Act, but they did not announce a new president would be announced until halfway through the Dec. 3, 2009 meeting at which Ross was appointed. Never was it announced a decision was finalized or who the finalists in consideration were.
This is not the way a public institution should handle milestone decisions.
The board needs to operate and make decisions openly to give the public the opportunity to offer input and it needs to start immediately, at tomorrow’s meeting.
The meeting agenda released online earlier this week does not include any major announcements, decisions or major additions that could be likened to the College of Medicine.
If, for one reason or another, the contents of the meeting include a major decision not included on the agenda, the seeds of distrust may be sewn too deeply to be removed during the tenure of any of the current trustees.
