https://www.spotlightpa.org/stateco...inistration-tuition-increase-fenchak-lubrano/
"The board only voted down four proposals, three of which were motions Fenchak made in the middle of a meeting. The other proposal, in July, was an option for how trustees should be elected to the board.
Apart from these votes, most trustees who served on the university’s board over the past half decade did not record a single vote in dissent.
However, among these semi-consistent “no” voters, Fenchak is an outlier. Across the board’s six full meetings in 2023 — the year after Fenchak was elected to the board — 15 items received at least one dissenting vote. Fenchak was involved in all of them. And for 10 of the items, he was the lone “no” vote."
If Fenchak and Lubrano had not been on the board in the past five years — to either vote or suggest proposals for other trustees to consider — the total number of items that received at least one dissenting vote would drop from 51 to 17."
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“You don’t want a homogeneous, ‘yes board,’” said Terry Mutchler, a lawyer with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel who represents Fenchak. “You want a situation where people have enough information to make common sense, reasonable, and visionary decisions. What I think is happening here, and I think the statistics would bear this out, is groupthink.”
A university’s governing body should support an administration, but it cannot be a rubber stamp, said Framroze Virjee, president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Boards must ask substantive questions about proposals, he said.
“This creates a sense of not only on the board, but of the stakeholders, that seriousness is being given to the question at hand,” Virjee told Spotlight PA"
"The board only voted down four proposals, three of which were motions Fenchak made in the middle of a meeting. The other proposal, in July, was an option for how trustees should be elected to the board.
Apart from these votes, most trustees who served on the university’s board over the past half decade did not record a single vote in dissent.
However, among these semi-consistent “no” voters, Fenchak is an outlier. Across the board’s six full meetings in 2023 — the year after Fenchak was elected to the board — 15 items received at least one dissenting vote. Fenchak was involved in all of them. And for 10 of the items, he was the lone “no” vote."
If Fenchak and Lubrano had not been on the board in the past five years — to either vote or suggest proposals for other trustees to consider — the total number of items that received at least one dissenting vote would drop from 51 to 17."
__________
“You don’t want a homogeneous, ‘yes board,’” said Terry Mutchler, a lawyer with Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel who represents Fenchak. “You want a situation where people have enough information to make common sense, reasonable, and visionary decisions. What I think is happening here, and I think the statistics would bear this out, is groupthink.”
A university’s governing body should support an administration, but it cannot be a rubber stamp, said Framroze Virjee, president of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Boards must ask substantive questions about proposals, he said.
“This creates a sense of not only on the board, but of the stakeholders, that seriousness is being given to the question at hand,” Virjee told Spotlight PA"
