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December 10, 1998

Faculty continue to question roles on trustees' committees

In 1996, Pitt's Board of Trustees revoked the voting rights of faculty serving on trustees' committees. Ever since, professors have voiced qualms about their ambiguous role at committee meetings.

Should they speak up or just sit in as observers? (Some committee chairpersons encourage faculty participation while others seem to view faculty as interlopers, according to some representatives.) How much information from closed-door committee meetings may faculty reps share with their colleagues? In yet another effort to resolve those questions, two University Senate leaders will meet Dec. 16 with Board of Trustees Secretary Robert Dunkelman.

University Senate President Nathan Hershey said he and Senate parliamentarian Richard Tobias will report back to Faculty Assembly following their meeting with Dunkelman.

The Assembly's Dec. 1 meeting featured the latest public discussion of faculty's role on board committees.

During the meeting, Hershey quoted from a letter he recently received from Dunkelman, stating that only two of the 10 trustees' committees on which faculty serve (the audit and budget committees) begin their meetings with statements declaring that all meeting business is confidential and not subject to Pennsylvania's Sunshine Law unless the committee takes formal action.

In an interview, Dunkelman reiterated that as far as he knew, only those two committees begin meetings with the reading of blanket confidentiality statements.

But at the Assembly meeting, professors who serve on three other committees (health sciences, investment and academic affairs/libraries) said those committees' meetings likewise begin with confidentiality declarations ‹ even though information discussed at those meetings often is innocuous or available from other sources, according to the professors.

Assembly member Mark Ginsburg said it is "an embarrassment" to be part of an institution whose board seeks to suppress such information.

This week, Senate President Hershey said: "I'm going to be staying on this thing indefinitely. I think it's very important, the whole manner in which the board functions and the extent to which the faculty of a large University community has some inkling of what's actually going on here rather than just learning about it either when something goes wrong or people start to complain." The bankruptcy of the Allegheny Health, Education and Research Foundation (AHERF) provided a cautionary lesson on the dangers of boards becoming isolated from the institutions they serve, Hershey said.

He told Faculty Assembly that he planned to attend the U.S. Bankruptcy Court hearings on AHERF, joking that the hearings would provide a seminar on the workings of institutional boards.

Pitt administrators and board leaders have stated that faculty, staff and student representatives on trustees' committees should feel free to participate in committee meetings and report to their constituents on meeting activities, as long as they show some discretion.

Assembly members are "trying to make a mountain out of a molehill" regarding faculty's role on trustees' committees, Board Secretary Dunkelman said. But he added, "I have no problem with meeting with them to discuss the issue further, if that's what they want." Last May, after a meeting between senior administrators and Senate leaders to discuss University shared governance, Provost James Maher told the University Times: "It seems to me that the faculty representatives can communicate the essence of [trustees'] committee activities to their colleagues, and present faculty viewpoints to the trustees, without divulging details from confidential meetings. It shouldn't be built up to be a bigger problem than it is." Pitt trustees took away faculty, staff and students' privileges as voting members of board committees two years ago, in response to a recommendation by outside consultants. The consultants recommended removing employees and students from trustees committees entirely, but Pitt's administration reportedly talked the board into allowing them to remain as non-voting representatives.

‹ Bruce Steele

Filed under: Feature,Volume 31 Issue 8

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