Big election
PSU alumni to vote on trustees
Like high school juniors with impressive 40-yard dash times, Penn State University alumni are being courted. Thirty-nine alumni candidates for the Penn State University Board of Trustees badly want their votes.
On April 10, members of the Penn State University Alumni Association and other alumni who requested them will receive electronic election ballots. Voting closes at 9 p.m. on May 2 for the three alumni trustee positions elected annually for three-year terms.
Why should we care when only 10 percent of the 32-member Board will be elected this spring?
As former Auditor General Jack Wagner starkly stated in his November 2012 special report titled “Recommendations or Governance Reform at the Pennsylvania State University after the Child Sex Abuse Scandal,” even though changing the governance structure would not have prevented a pedophile from using university facilities to sexually assault young boys, “changes will reduce the potential for breakdowns to remain undetected and will add needed transparency to this flagship public university….”
The Penn State University Board of Trustees is broken, and it is up to the alumni to fix it from inside the system.
In most elections, media editorial boards interview candidates, weigh accomplishments and relative merits and offer endorsements for readers’ consideration. For this election, we offer three key questions alumni should ask candidates to determine if they will forcefully advocate for evolutionary change from inside the board room.
Will you vote to remove the university president as a voting member of the Board of Trustees?
The Board is the university president’s boss. It has the power to hire, reprimand and fire him or her. Removing the president as a voting member of the Board is a clear and mandatory first step to positive board change. Without it, all other talk of board reform amounts to little more than smoke and mirrors.
Alumni should ask hard questions and demand straight answers before they cast their votes.
Penn State University is the only public Big 10 school at which the president is a voting member of the Board. Of the 20 public universities in the country with the highest enrollments, only PSU permits its chief operating officer a Board vote.
Will you enforce term limits for Trustees?
According to Wagner’s report, Trustees may serve up to 15 years, with exceptions. In one case, however, those exceptions have allowed a Trustee to serve for 15 TERMS, or 43 years, on the Board; far too long.
New brooms may not always sweep clean, but new Trustees always ask a lot of questions. Trustee turnover must be forced to constantly refresh the organization and compel transparency while also broadening the base of former Trustees able to advocate for the organization.
Will you vote to subject Penn State University to the state’s Right-to-Know law and Ethics Act?
Penn State University claims it must be allowed Right-to-Know exemptions due to its unique role as a research university and to attract the highest quality talent. Don’t believe it.
Wagner’s report likely said it best: “There is no shame in opening records at a public university. The shame is in opposing open records.”
True transparency, in records as well as in disclosure of conflicts of interest by Trustees and employees, is vital to erase the stain of the Sandusky scandal.
Alumni should ask hard questions and demand straight answers before they cast their votes. It falls to them to fix what the Trustees have so far failed to repair.
–Harrisburg Patriot-News