Penn State trustees still aren’t talking enough in public

PENN STATE’S BOARD OF TRUSTEES deserves credit for spending more time in public discussion this year than it has in the recent past. After years in which outcomes often were treated as foregone conclusions, more conversation is a welcome change. But more is not the same as enough. The measure of a governing board is not whether discussion increases but whether it is robust, wide-ranging and focused on the decisions that matter most — because fiduciary duty needs more than transparency. It requires discussion. Penn State’s Board of Trustees has 39 members, including the governor’s nonvoting representative. If there is no need for open conversation about what is being done, how it is being done and why, there is no reason to have that many people at the table. A board’s role is not to serve as the administration’s backup singers. It is to engage in spirited debate about priorities, trade-offs and direction. That is why the board is so large and deliberately diverse. It includes the governor and cabinet secretaries, trustees appointed to represent statewide interests, voices from agriculture, business and industry, alumni elected by alumni and representatives of students and faculty. The backgrounds of the board range from accounting and football to meteorology and technology. This diversity is not meant to check boxes. It is to surface questions, challenge assumptions and reflect the many communities Penn State serves. So it is worth asking why, as Spotlight PA reports, the board’s nine public meetings in 2025 — totaling about 10½ hours — devoted just 22% of that time to discussion of items that later received votes. That figure is higher than in recent years. That improvement matters. But the scope and substance of those discussions matter just as much. According to Spotlight PA’s analysis, nearly all of the board’s public debate focused on naming the football field, closing seven campuses and removing a sitting trustee. Meanwhile, the university’s strategic plan, operating budget and the president’s compensation package received, in total, roughly 30 seconds of public discussion. What a board chooses to debate — and what it does not — speaks to priorities. That dynamic was on full display at the board’s May meeting, when several trustees asked for more time to discuss the proposed campus closures. They were not attempting to derail the vote or even force a different outcome. They were asking for time to consider options and consequences before making a decision that will reshape communities and lives. The request was denied, and the vote moved forward. This push for more discussion is not new. For years, alumni-elected trustees have asked for fuller public debate before major votes. They are often overruled by a majority that prefers to move quickly.