At the meeting, also known as the stakeholder engagement forum, MSU administrators heard from about 50 students, faculty and experts on three predetermined topics: artificial intelligence, work culture and the student experience. Each discussion lasted nearly an hour. 

With about 12 tables in the room, trustees filtered to each open seat to speak with the stakeholders, taking detailed notes, one student attendee told The State News. Each table had between one and three students, seated around university faculty and leaders. 

The State News spoke to multiple of the around 70 participants outside the near four-hour meeting, as media was barred from the private gathering.

A source in university leadership shared the directory of attendees with The State News, which included mainly MSU deans and vice presidents, experts in the conversation topics as well as one outlier: State Rep. Joe Tate, D-Detroit. 

Attendees told The State News that the forum did not include any discussion of the university’s tumultuous summer, which saw successive leadership departures amid growing trustee scrutiny. However, President Kevin Guskiewicz backing out of his decision to leave MSU for Clemson University remained the elephant in the room. 

Outside closed doors

At 8:15 a.m., when attendees started filing down the stairs to the meeting room, minimal students filled the concourse. But, when the meeting wrapped up at 12:15 p.m., the foyer was packed. 

Not everyone understood what was happening. One student pointed out the corner of the pavilion to a friend, where cops and security guards stood at a check-in table near the meeting entrance.  

“Something to do with the Board of Trustees,” the friend said. 

The other student asked simply: “What does that mean?”

During a break at around 10 a.m., Guskiewicz stood outside the door for a brief moment. Another student mentioned it to a peer, saying, “I think that's Kevin Guskiewicz.” 

On the way out, attendees of the meeting were handed the “fanciest bagged lunch,” as one said — when they then strolled past the Panera Bread line, out the store to exit the building. 

AI at MSU

A significant portion of the forum was dedicated to navigating MSU’s stance on AI, including ways to incorporate the technology at the university as AI proliferates higher education. 

Social work and journalism junior Jacob Mason said that a majority of the conversation at his table surrounded MSU’s current AI policy. 

MSU’s AI policy, which was adopted last year, broadly places the decision-making power to each department. The policy doesn’t name one singular guideline but instead leaves adaptation to instructors. 

“There needs to be more standardization for the whole university,” Mason said. “My table said that a lot of students go from class to class and the AI policy is different in every one, and then they get confused.” 

At a post-meeting press conference, Guskiewicz said he wants MSU to be a “leader in AI,” but emphasized the importance of not “losing the human and people component.”

Board Chair Brianna Scott mentioned using AI to solve employment shortages — pulling from a conversation during the meeting about MSU Extension, the outreach arm of the university. 

“With Extension being across 83 counties … not all of the offices are able to have the same amount of staff across each office,” Scott said. 

‘We’ll see’ 

The stakeholder meeting last year generated scrutiny over its closed-door policy, with critics saying it shrouds a core tenet of university governance in secrecy. As part of the policy, the university handpicks stakeholders to meet at a private location on campus and media is barred from the room. 

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. 

Scott said to The State News on Tuesday that the "closed setting" allows for stakeholders to speak freely without public blowback. 

Associated Students of Michigan State University President Maddie Hanes pointed to transparency questions with how stakeholders were chosen. 

“I would like to see a little bit more transparency from the Board of Trustees of why some of these decisions are made,” Hanes said. 

Hanes also said that there was little to no explanation on why certain students were chosen. 

Scott previously said to The State News that trustees are not involved in the stakeholder selection process.

When discussing workplace culture, Vice President of the Union of Non-Tenure Track Faculty Hannah Grisham said although the conversation was good, she didn’t know what the trustees will do going forward.

“We have some of the worst benefits, and people stay for a long time, and that's a real tension,” Grisham said. “I just think we should have benefits that commiserate with our peer institutions and I heard a lot of other people in different capacities agree at my table.”

If these forums are intended to create change on campus, then, “we'll see, prove it,” Grisham said. 

Or as Mason said it: “I think that a lot of issues were brought forward that have (realistic) changes, but now it's up to the university to actually make those changes.”