This paper published an article last week that detailed the secretive nature of the SMU Board of Trustees. While we are not ignorant of the fact that secrecy is needed in occasional events, we feel that the secrecy that the board continues to embrace is not only contradictory to its goals but also at odds with the values of the SMU student body.

As evidenced by the quotes mentioned in the article, “SMU’s Board of Secrecy,” board members have a startling disconnect with the students at SMU. Their inability to respond to questions and their unwillingness to embrace a policy that would allow students a peek into their daily workings leads us to question how in touch with the student body they really are.

Do billionaires really understand the impact of yearly raises to tuition? Should SMU students be concerned that board members’ names are rarely even publicized because “They are CEOs of big companies and are very important people”? What is the point of Student Senate or the countless other outlets for student opinions if we have no idea how those opinions are received by the board and the board gives no feedback to those opinions in an open forum?

Members claim that one of the fortes of the board is its “strength of diversity,” but as the article accurately points out, there are very few members of the board that are not rich, white and Republican.

Does that really reflect the diversity of SMU’s student body? Further, does it reflect the goal that SMU has set of achieving a more diverse campus? SMU, by the encouragement of the board, continues to implement scholarship and outreach programs targeted at minority students in order to make our campus more diverse, but instead of taking this goal and reflecting it upon itself, the Board of Trustees has allowed its white, rich, Republican members to exceed their 12 year term limits by over 20 years.  We find this hypocritical.

The Daily Campus editorial board would like to remind the board members that they, in the end, are supposed to answer to the student body. Without students, SMU would not exist. The function of the board is to keep the school running in such a way that students will not only be satisfied but excited about being a Mustang.

Unfortunately, the SMU Board of Trustees seems to be at odds with that goal. The board continues to insist that secrecy is needed in order to carry out the day-to-day workings of the board.  Linda Pitts Custard, a board member, said in response to the concern over secrecy that, “Students need to focus on class and getting A’s. As long as the school functions well, students need to not worry about how the board is run.”

But the board has knowingly put the school at risk before. The board knew about, and in fact authorized, the payments to football players that resulted in the “death penalty” that stripped SMU of a football team for two years. In response to this incident, the United Methodist Church called for SMU to have open board meetings in order to prevent such an overt illegal action from happening again, something that the board has never implemented.

The Daily Campus calls on the board to open its meetings in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Law, which requires that all meetings be open until such time as they discuss the following: purchase or lease of real property, security measures, receipt of gifts, consultation with attorneys, personnel matters, economic development or certain homeland security matters.

The Daily Campus feels that the flexibility that that law gives board members would allow them to exercise closed meetings at responsible times while at the same time allowing SMU students to see exactly what their money is being spent on.

We believe that it is time for the board to embrace the openness that has been called for by the Methodist Church and the student body. Until the board accepts and implements this openness, we believe that it will not be discharging the full range of its responsibilities.