Page 6
_ Lion’s Eye
May 10, 1979
Board of Trustees In A League of Its Own
Reprinted by permission from
Turning Point, University Park.
by Hal Saville
Penn State is the state's
largest public university, boast-
ing more than $640 million worth
of property and a community of
more than 50,000, including
students, faculty and staff. As a
new decade nears, we must ask
who will determine the nature
and purpose of the University.
Just as William Carlos Williams
referred to modern America as
travelling without purpose into
the future with “no one to drive
the car,” we should ask who will
be steering the Univeristy into
the future. What sort of citizen
will the University produce from
its students?
The charter of the Farmer's
High School of Pennsylvania
established the board of trustees
in 1855. Written for a small 19th
century school that taught teen-
agers to be good farmers, the
charter has grown obsolete,
never anticipating the school’s
growth during. the past 124
years. :
The board of trustees still
makes all major University
policy decisions. Trustees decide
what is taught, what research is
done, and how money is spent.
Sitting on the board are 27
voting and five non-voting mem-
bers. Voting members include six
appointed by the governor, nine
elected by alumni, and six each
elected by state agricultural and
industrial societies. The five
non-voting members include the
governor, the. university presi-
dent, and state secretaries of
education, agriculture and envi-
ronmental resources. Only one
voting member, appointed by the
governor, is a student. Students
have no influence on who is
selected to the board.
Although Penn State students
are voting members of the
United States, and pay between
20 and 30 percent of University
operating funds, the board does
not consider them responsible
enough to elect trustees. In
response five students filed suit
against the board in 1977,
challenging the ligitimacy of the
trustee selection process.
The suit was prompted by the
board's refusal ’to let Penn PIRG,
a consumer protection group,
collect funds through a tuition
billing arrangement. Ralph
Nader, a supporter of the PIRG
effort, charged that the trustees’
conflicts of interest had led them
to stop PIRG from becoming
active in Pennsylvania. He
accused the agricultural and
industrial societies and some
trustees of political ties with
Pennsylvanian corporations that
PIRG might investigate, Al
though PennPIRG investigations
discovered possible abuses of
power by trustees, no lawsuits
resulted and the PIRG effort
soon died. Instead, the five
students questioned the election
process for alumni, agricultural
and industrial trustees.
Initiating the suit were Penn-
PIRG member Jim Scarantino,
Ralph Nader, and Washington
lawyer, Alan Morrison. Morrison
directs the Public Citizen Litiga-
tion Group, a branch of Nader's
Public Citizen organization. the
group specializes in elass action
suits, those protecting the rights
of citizen groups, and is covering
all expenses=in the student suit.
Because the legal process is
slow, Morrison tried to make
their suit a classaction suit
representing all PSU students.
Then the suit would not be
nullified if the five students
graduated before the case resolu-
tion. The motion was denied,
however, and after three years,
only two of the five students — a
senior and a sophomore — are
still undergraduates at the
University.
In their suit, the students
argued that the 14th Amend-
ment to the Consititution pro-
tects them from being denied the
right to vote for trustees of a
public institution when that right
is given to others. Judge Malcom
Muir, on Jan. 24, 1978, decided
against the students. The suit
was appealed in November, 1978,
and was decided against students
by Judge Roggero J. Aldisert of
the Third ' Circuit Court of
Appeals in Philadelphia.
The student case has strong
constitutional merit, but the
University lawyers have relied
on legal technicalities and argu-
ments, one of which Judge Muir
described as “frivolous in the
extreme.” When the decision is
reached, the losing side will
probably appeal the case to the
U.S. Supreme Court, which could
take years to reach a verdict. In
the meantime, the board will
remain as it has for the past 124
years, unresponsive to students.
If the students win the case, |
the charter would have to be
revised by the State Legislature. |
The 21 trustees
in question |
would not be allowed to sit on the |
Board. The
legislature could
decide to let the remaining 11
trustees govern the University,
or establish a selection process
which includes student input. If
the students lose, they might
never be able to determine how
their time and money are spent |
at the Univerisity.
Students are often concerned |
aboaut what will happen at the
University after they graduate.
The suit will have no direct effect
in the next two or three years. |
But the citizens the University
produces, now and in the future,
will have profound effect on the
future of American society, and
one quality they must possess is
the abiltly to govern themselves
responsibly. Students
should |
first learn this ability at the
University by electing and inter-
acting with its trustees.
Delco Sophomores Here Is
How to make
ee id College Attending
~~ / Graduation Date
nh
Ms.
eM
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Tell me more about the
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your last two years of college ©
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. Program.
wl
junior years.
Address
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State
Zip
County.
Phone
Take the Army ROTC Two-Year
If you've just about completed
gl ow second year of college, and you're
a planning on two more, it’s not too late
‘to take Army ROTC.
You start the program with
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Then it’s back to school in the
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And two years later, you'll
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some real experience at
managing people. |
The last two years of college
mean a lot. Take the Army ROTC
Two-Year Program and you can make
them mean a lot more.
See Cpt. Wilson
in Room AA-B
(
leading and