John Hook may be barking in the right forest - kudos to him for that - but up the wrong trees (or at least not the most important trees).
Some may recall that back in 2014 the Board Leadership decided that they could do whatever they want - at their sole discretion - to change the composition of the Board. And they did.
BOT committee agrees to propose changes at full board meeting tomorrow | University Park Campus News | psucollegian.com
They, in order to dilute the impact of elected trustees:
First proposed eliminating some of the alumni-elected seats. Faced with strong opposition among some (including some folks in Harrisburg) they instead added 5 MORE appointed and 1 MORE ex-officio trustees (to a Board that everyone knew was already larger than ideal - but decent governance was never their goal).
It was, IMO, one of the greatest and bald-faced failures of responsible governance in PSU BOT history. But, they did it anyway.
FWIW:
1) Among the 13 B10 Publics, only Rutgers has any Board-appointed seats on their Board - they have 7 of them.
2) PSU has 17 appointed seats - 6 by the Governor, 11 self-appointed by the Board - along with another 6 "ex-officio" members, 4 of whom are voting (The 2 ex-officio without voting rights are the Governor and the University President).
3) Of the 21 non-elected voting trustee seats, 20 of them have never voted anything but "Aye" to every proposal ever brought before the Board (1, the appointed faculty member, once voted "No", to a budget that included a tuition increase). Of course, those seats also make up a majority.
The Board is larger than ideal - but size (while maybe not ideal) has always been FAR from the biggest "not ideal" governance issue wrt Board composition and operation. IMO.... and I wrote/spoke to those at great length and detail over the years.
Will they do it (unilaterally change the manner in which the Board is composed) again? If so, in what ways? Who knows?
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