The day before the MSU Board of Trustees holds its public meetings on Fridays, trustees meet in private to talk about the issues they will face the next day.

The meetings on Thursdays are not open to the public or the news media. The State News' request that these meetings be open has been denied, and documents requested were either withheld or heavily censored.

The court has ruled that the board can only close its meetings during some parts of a presidential search. However, some trustees have interpreted this ruling more broadly to apply to other board meetings as well. The disagreement probably won't be solved until the court rules again.

But the board has so much to gain from being more open with students.

Let's put aside, for a minute, the legal discussion of whether the board has to open its closed meetings.

Instead, let's look at this from the board's point of view and explore the reasons why it would benefit the group to reveal its discussions from committee work sessions and its dinner gatherings on Thursday nights.

Board members should want to give the public, who elected them in the first place, a glimpse of documents, such as copies of a preliminary budget.

Giving constituents a look into how it operates and why it makes the decisions would allow voters to have a better understanding of the board.

After all, the board makes huge decisions that affect everyone. Not to mention the fact that many of the decisions involve millions of university dollars, a lot of which is tuition.

The board also decides how much tuition students pay. At the annual meeting when trustees announce how much tuition will be, they all agree it is a tough decision and then move on to the next agenda item with little to no serious discussion.

Students only see the end result, which is usually them having to pay more for an education.

The board would benefit by opening up its private meetings because it would help students better understand the decisions the board has to make.

The board should want to give everyone a chance to witness and participate in the discussion that leads to its decisions. If the public could give the board input, then it could always say, when it has made tough decisions, that it gave constituents a chance to express their opinion.

This would make the process as credible as possible and help students understand why they are constantly being asked to shell out more money to go to MSU.

Credibility and legitimacy are things the board should want to have.

The MSU Board of Trustees is made up of elected officials who should be willing to accept accountability for how they handle university business.

The group has so much to gain by opening up private meetings and dinners. It will earn respect and legitimacy from the public and help the public better understand how it operates and why it does what it does.

That's something the board should be striving for — whether the law says so or not.