EDITORIAL: Public needs to be informed of open committee meetings
While openness and transparency is important and certainly encouraged with administrators at CMU, it must be complete or it is worthless.
Starting Wednesday, the committee meetings the day before CMU Board of Trustees meetings will be open to the public, according to an e-mail sent to the faculty listserv. The Academic and Student Affairs, College of Medicine, Finance and Facilities, Policy and Bylaws, Trustees-Faculty Liaison and Trustees-Student Liaison committees will be open to the students and public.
This allows more transparency in the decision-making of the trustees, keeping them honest and accountable. But it would be nice if they would actually spread this news to other facets of the community and on campus.
Saying these meetings are now public and then not advertising it is either an embarrassing oversight or an attempt to actually keep people from coming to the committee meetings. The fact that the announcement was only e-mailed to faculty, and not students or media, is especially telling.
It is a positive thing that these meetings are open, because students and community members should be allowed to see every part of the decision-making process of a public university.
But this e-mail was sent last Saturday, and only informing a small portion of the university community makes the whole decision ring disingenuous.
If the university and the trustees truly want people to sit in on these meetings, they should e-mail the entire university about it and advertise it on the university website.
Sadly, the number of students who would be genuinely interested in going to these committee meetings is likely very small. The inner-workings of the university are not an overwhelming concern of the student body at large. It’s not like the trustees would be dealing with an overwhelming rush of people at their committee meetings.
The issue here is the administrators and the trustees need to match up what they say with what they do.
Opening these meetings to the public is the right thing to do. Now the university must follow through and give concerned people a reasonable opportunity to attend.
