On the evening of Jan. 12, the MSU Board of Trustees gathered, as it often does, to share a dinner and drinks at Cowles House the night before its monthly public meeting.

Along with MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon, the trustees enjoyed entrees, such as chicken breast stuffed with figs and spinach, and $64 bottles of Cartlidge & Brown merlot. The dinners, a mainstay of the board's monthly university-related activities, are more than just a chance to chitchat, Trustee Dorothy Gonzales said.

Gonzales said the dinners allow the trustees to talk about policy decisions facing the university.

"People have the misconception these are just dinners and eating, but it is also a chance to discuss the various issues we have before us," Gonzales said.

In the past, board members have told The State News the dinners were merely social events and no work was conducted. In January, Simon denied a request to have a State News reporter attend the event, saying the dinner was just a way for the trustees to meet and talk.

Gonzales said the dinners are one part of a two-day work experience that starts Thursday mornings with the trustees' work sessions, which also are closed to the public. Going from the work session to dinner to the next day's public meeting is part of the trustee work cycle that has been practiced for years, Gonzales said.

"The types of discussions are very much needed to understand issues or find resolutions," Gonzales said. "Sometimes we don't leave until 9:30 or 10 (p.m.)."

Despite what Gonzales says, Trustee Dee Cook said the meetings are not an occasion for work.

"We talk very informally," Cook said. "We get very few chances to sit down together."

Cook maintains that although the trustees might talk about university-related topics, the meetings are not a continuation of the daylong work sessions.

"We might ask why it is taking so long to move Alumni Association into their new offices or about the orchestra's trip to Austria, but that is not what I would call work," Cook said. "There is no agenda."

The gray area between the two perspectives raises the question of whether the dinners violate Michigan's Open Meetings Act, which requires all meetings of publicly elected bodies, such as the board, be open and accessible to the public.

Herschel Fink, a First Amendment and media lawyer who represents newspapers across the state, said there does not have to be an agenda to constitute a meeting of a public body.

"If you look at the definition of a public meeting in the Open Meetings Act, it says a meeting is a convening of a public body at which a quorum is present for the purpose of deliberating toward or rendering a decision on a public policy," Fink said.

He said deliberating is any discussion between a public body that helps clarify the issues or weigh sides of an argument.

Board Chairman David Porteous shares Cook's view of the dinners as informal events.

"It is an opportunity for board members to talk about what is happening in their individual lives," Porteous said. "The conversation is certainly not all personal and not all about Michigan State. It's a nice blend of both."

Porteous said the board endeavors to be very sensitive to the Open Meetings Act and follows the state Constitution in keeping its Friday meetings public.

Documents made available to The State News under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that the price tag for the informal dinner on Jan. 12 was about $800, not including the wages of the student workers who serve the trustees.

The university refused to release the wage information of the students who work at these dinners, citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects students at public universities from having personal information shared with a third party. MSU denied the request despite the fact that The State News did not ask for information that could be used to identify the students in question.

Josh Jarman can be reached at jarmanjo@msu.edu.