Trustee Blasts Leadership of Penn State Board, Radically Different Reform Bill May be in the Works The on-going battle between two factions on the Penn State Board of Trustees continues to simmer. In the latest flare up, alumni-elected trustee Barbara Doran has issued an editorial attacking the boards leadership and calling for intervention by the state legislature and governor-elect Tom Wolf. And at least one legislator appears ready to answer the call. Doran charges that a small cabal of influential [board members] has accumulated enough power that they make decisions on behalf of Penn State that are not necessarily in the best interests of the university ... Governor-elect Wolf and the state legislature should impose a solution on this small group of power players who seem unwilling to put their own desires aside and act for the greater good. Fellow alumni-elected trustee Anthony Lubrano says he has discussed legislative intervention with Pennsylvania State Senators Jake Corman (R-Centre) and John Yudichak (D-Carbon). Both legislators are Penn State graduates who have spearheaded a legislative effort to reform the board of trustees. Earlier in the year, Corman and Yudichak co-sponsored Senate Bill 1240 in an attempt to reduce the number of board members. In September, a board of trustees committee passed a proposal that would increase the board to 38 members. On Nov. 13 Yudichak and Corman sent a letter to board chair Keith Masser, asking the board to delay a vote on the proposal. Less than a week later, the board of trustees voted to increase the size of the board from 30 to 36 members, a move opposed by the alumni-elected trustees who fought for a smaller board. Yudichak is now planning to reintroduce legislation in 2015 to remake the board and the next proposal could be radically different than the previous effort. Were going to go back to the drawing board, he says. I think well try to codify exactly what it is to be a state-related university. Right now we have a situation where the current majority on the board wants to ignore state law. ... Its a personal agenda. Theyre ignoring their own bylaws. That tells me that I no longer have confidence in the leadership of the board or the direction of the board. ... The current leadership is not capable of reforming the board in a meaningful way, he says. statecollege/news/local-news/trustee-blasts-leadership-of-penn-state-board-radically-different-reform-bill-may-be-in-the-works,1462266/
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 19:48:09 +0000
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