Under the administration of President Donald Trump, a debate about the role public universities should play in American society has taken center stage in politics. Seemingly unprecedented numbers of eyes are on the decisions of schools like MSU.
The institution’s top administrators, faculty and student leaders gathered Thursday for the first time of the new school year to deliberate on its future in uncertain times and gauge the pulse of its “stakeholders.”
Still, amid that weighty backdrop, exactly how the meeting played out is difficult to discern. It was closed to the public, and available only to a select group of roughly 50 invitees.
The forum was the first of its kind and set to replace the typical first board meeting of the academic year, which has been long open to the public and media, featured a lengthy public comment period, and contained votes on prospective policy. The board voted to make that change in December 2024.
It was a decision that raised eyebrows for some at MSU, given that it appeared to grant more privacy to a governing body often criticized for a perceived lack of transparency.
As the closed-door meeting unfolded in a room on the first floor of campus’ new Multicultural Center — police officers guarding both entrances, makeshift black curtains blocking a view of the room — some still felt the private format is the wrong call. Faculty members said the limited public access would curtail the benefits from the rare opportunity for MSU leaders to come face to face with students.
Though he believes invitees were grappling in good-faith with MSU's challenges, Faculty Senator Jack Lipton said, “those who deliver critical services, or students who feel a lack of belonging, or those who live on campus in buildings exceeding their useful lives” were missing from the forum.
“I hope that future summits will more broadly engage our constituent communities,” he added.
Members of university leadership disagree. They lauded it as a controlled way to foster frank discussion on key issues, compared with the public board meetings that are at-times disorderly. Those have been halted in recent times by staged protests and occasionally marked by heated exchanges among feuding MSU leaders.
“When there’s not an audience there, it allows people to have real conversations and people don’t feel guarded, and they don’t feel like they need to hold back their opinion,” Board Chair Kelly Tebay said after the forum.
The State News remained outside the meeting for its approximately six-hour duration, asking attendees briefly filtering in and out about what was being discussed.
While an exact account is difficult to ascertain, President Kevin Guskiewicz gave an outline on the meeting’s contents in a press conference afterward: Participants discussed matters of health and wellbeing, community outreach engagement, research, student success initiatives, infrastructure and technological innovations.
Michigan’s Open Meetings Act requires that all gatherings of a public body be open to the public. However, a 1999 state Supreme Court decision excludes public universities from the law’s requirements, due to their unique constitutional status.
That means MSU has broad discretion in deciding whether to let the public into its meetings — as several university spokespeople reminded The State News on Thursday.
While secrecy by the board has long been a subject of debate, this private gathering represented the furthest scaling back of that public access to date, at a time of uniquely heightened interest in universities’ deliberations.
‘I think the president is here’
If a student were to have glimpsed the forum, it may have bore a resemblance to an in-class discussion. Trustees, students and faculty discussed a common topic in small groups of eight before sharing their conclusions to the larger group, Tebay said in the press conference.
All the while, caterers supplying participants with food filtered in and out, as did forum-goers. They included several trustees who maintained the meeting’s privacy when stepping outside the conference room.
After emerging, Trustee Renee Knake Jefferson redirected questions to Board Chair Tebay. Trustee Sandy Pierce kept walking forward and looked away as a reporter attempted to start a conversation. Trustee Dennis Denno simply told a reporter: “I don’t talk to The State News.”
Trustee Brianna Scott provided a narrow glimpse into the discussions. She said representatives of Michigan’s agricultural industry expressed concerns about potential cuts to MSU Extension. The institution’s outreach arm partners with counties to educate locals on several subjects the institution researches, agriculture chief among them.
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Scott, like other leaders, also celebrated the unique opportunities presented by the private forum: “At a board meeting people just talk to us. There’s a dialogue here,” she said.
Meanwhile, the students milling in the multicultural center seemed more engrossed in their studies than the conference room’s happenings; though at least one had an acute sense something momentous was quietly afoot.
“I think the president is here or something,” a student whispered to her friend as they walked by a police officer.
True stakeholders?
Board chair Tebay praised the invite-only forum as a way for the trustees to engage with “a lot of different people that we wouldn’t normally have access to” in the board’s “work sessions” — private gatherings held the day before public board meetings to discuss their vote docket and meet with university stakeholders.
However, some students and faculty noted that the selection process for the forum left some voices out.
At the tail end of the Spring 2025 semester MSU sent out a mass-email to the student body, faculty and staff announcing the forum. It included a form recipients could fill out with an option to express interest in attending the forum. It’s unclear, though, how many of the form’s respondents actually attended.
Associated Students of MSU president Kathryn Harding said the forum should have allowed an opportunity for regular students — not just student leaders, like herself — to talk to school officials.
“I think it's important for students who may not be in these positions to have these conversations and convey their concerns,” she said.
Justin St. Charles, a member of the faculty senate, echoed that sentiment. The next time MSU has its stakeholder forum, he hopes “we’re actually involving true stakeholders.”
