The SMU Board of Trustees sits behind closed doors in the Ernst and Young Gallery inside of the Fincher Building on February 26. (Michael Danser/ The Daily Campus )
Editor’s Note: The following is Part 3 in our “Hidden on the Hilltop: SMU’s Culture of Secrecy” series, which examines the secretive nature of various operations at SMU.
For the rest of the series: Part 1, Part 2a, Part 2b
“The management and direction of all affairs and interests of the University shall be vested in the Board of Trustees.”
– SMU Bylaws
The Ernst & Young Gallery is aptly named.
Four large arched windows frame the east side, filling the spacious room with sunlight when the blinds are raised. The entrance, on the west side of the Fincher Building, features double doors with glass panes that allow a sweeping view of the gallery.
The room, housed in the original home of the Cox School of Business, seems a fitting place for SMU’s stated mission: “The University is dedicated to the values of academic freedom and open inquiry and to its United Methodist heritage.”
On the morning of Friday, Feb. 26, the SMU Board of Trustees conducted its first meeting of 2010 in the Ernst & Young Gallery. The window blinds were closed. Partitions were placed next to the double doors inside the room to prevent anyone from peering in. Doors were locked.
This too is fitting.
The board of trustees is the most powerful group at SMU. Its members have final say over every important decision on campus from the budget to the Bush Library. They make these decisions behind closed doors. The board treats its records like classified documents.
Every agenda, vote, resolution and contract is hidden from public view. Trustees are equally vigilant in shielding the minutes of its meetings. The board provides no list of the reports it receives, much less their contents.
On the SMU Web site, there is a single page devoted to the board of trustees. It lists the names of the 42 members and little else. There is a phone number for “The Secretary.”
That person is Mary Anne Rogers, associate secretary in SMU Legal Affairs. Rogers said the limited information on the trustees is designed to protect their privacy.
“We try to protect our board members as much as possible,” she said. “You can understand. They are CEOs of big companies and are very important people.”
Ray Hunt is a VIP. A billionaire. Number 261 on Forbes 2009 list of the world’s richest people. President George W. Bush twice appointed him to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. Hunt has been a member of the SMU Board of Trustees since 1976. SMU’s Articles of Incorporation limit the maximum length of service to 12 consecutive years. The Daily Campus wanted to ask Hunt how he’s managed to stay on the board for 34 years. Hunt declined to be interviewed.
He was not alone. The Daily Campus contacted more than half of the 42 trustees. Three of every four refused.
For the trustees, there cannot be too much secrecy. Each year, the trustees solemnly promise never to make public what they discuss in their meetings.
“At the first of the year, we all pledge to one another that this is a private discussion, that this should not be shared with anyone else,” said Caren Prothro, a trustee for at least 17 years.
The handful of trustees who did grant interviews said confidentiality is good for the board and beneficial for SMU. They see no reason to explain their decisions. And they have no intention of changing how they do business.
According to Linda Pitts Custard, a trustee since 2000, questioning the board is a waste of time.
“Students need to focus on class and getting A’s,” she said. “As long as the school functions well, students need to not worry about how the board is run.”
Many SMU students said that given the stakes involved, it would be foolish for them to be unconcerned.
“I wholeheartedly disagree” with Custard’s view, said Drew Konow, a junior from Baton Rouge majoring in religious studies and foreign language and literature. “That’s espousing an opinion that somehow students aren’t affected by decisions and the decisions aren’t relative to our future.”
Alex Vazquez, a senior from Dallas majoring in Spanish and psychology, echoes Konow’s view. “[The board members] deal with the outward perspective…It’s like they’re looking at a picture and saying, ‘Oh, it looks so pretty.’ But they don’t see the inside, the nuts and bolts.”
There is a student trustee on the board. Fred Olness, president of the Faculty Senate, and other trustees proudly point to this as evidence that they are in touch with students and their concerns.
“SMU is rather unique in the sense that it has a student representative to the board of trustees and also the committees,” he said.
However, American University and Duke University—both private Methodist colleges recognized by SMU as peer schools—may see this as less impressive. American has three student representatives on its 32-member board, said Maria Pahigiannis, the board’s assistant secretary. Duke has four student trustees on its 36-member board, according to Christine Collins, the board’s executive assistant.
There is a unique aspect to SMU’s student trustee. At American and Duke, the student body elects those who will represent them on the board of trustees. At SMU, any full-time student who has completed at least 36 hours with a GPA of 3.0 or higher can apply for the student trustee’s position.
The board selects the finalists from these applicants, then interviews the chosen few. One written question probes an applicant’s willingness to keep a secret. Given that “confidentiality is a serious obligation” for SMU trustees, the board asks applicants to provide an example where they were told to disclose sensitive information and how they dealt with it.
Rob Hayden, a senior public policy and political science major, said he answered the question this way: “I understand the importance of confidentiality in terms of serious matters. My understanding of that would help me act in a way that would not go against what would be necessary to serve as a member of the board.” The board selected Hayden as the student trustee for 2009-2010.
Julia Malherbe, a graduate student in economics, sees the SMU student selection process as ludicrous. “That doesn’t make sense,” said Malherbe, who also earned her undergraduate degree at SMU. “If they can’t discuss issues with students, then what’s the point of there being a student on the board. To make themselves look better, I think.”
Ruth Collins Sharp Altshuler, SMU’s longest-serving trustee, and other board members said their governance of the university is a classic example of transparency. “This is the most well-run and open-university you will find anywhere,” she said.
Altshuler may be correct, but not when it comes to records. The SMU Board of Trustees refuses to make any of its records public.
This is not the case at American and Duke as well as Emory University, another university comparable to SMU. At each of these, the governing boards provide public access to a wealth of information: trustee biographies; committee members and responsibilities; meeting schedules; summaries of board discussions and decisions; trustee policies and university bylaws.
Dee Wilson, the Emory trustees’ managing director, said the availability of online information sends a vital message to the campus community. “It’s important for the university and students to know its board,” Wilson said. “Transparency is very important.”
Several SMU students said their trustees should follow the example of these schools, sharing records with those on campus and allowing the student body to elect its representatives.
Jamie Kim, a Colleyville freshman majoring in international studies, said that under the current system, SMU trustees “are probably going to pick someone they want to represent their opinions. We should have someone willing to stand against the board’s opinions and maybe discuss views they may not have.”
Royce E. “Ed” Wilson, who joined the SMU Board of Trustees in 2008, would not dignify these suggestions with an answer. “I’m not going to sit here and answer this to the press,” he said. “I’m not going to answer any more questions like this and if that’s all you have, I’ll have to hang up.”
Wilson is president of Chicago-based Tribune Broadcasting, where he oversees Superstation WGN and 22 other television stations. He previously was president of Fox Television.
There are 403 billionaires in the United States; that’s one for every 761,803 Americans.
There are six billionaires on the SMU Board of Trustees, one for every seven members.
They include Ray Hunt ($2.5 billion); banker and investor Gerald J. Ford ($1.3 billion); Antonio O. Garza, Jr., husband of Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala, the richest woman in Mexico with a net worth of $2 billion; Gene C. Jones, wife of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones ($1.3 billion); Sarah Perot, wife of developer Ross Perot Jr.( $1.5 billion); and shipping tycoon Helmut R. Sohmen ($1.3 billion).
To some, this might suggest board members come from a rarified world lacking diversity.
The trustees and those who represent them said this is simply not true.
Paul Ward, the trustees’ general counsel, said the board is a model of diversity.
“What makes a very good board is the kind of business, professional and political leadership that gives it strength of diversity of this collective experience,” he said.
Trustees select most nominees for the board. A United Methodist Church council representing Texas and seven other states is allowed to recommend 12 persons including three bishops. But final approval for each board member rests with the trustees.
An analysis of the current make-up of the board suggests SMU trustees define “strength of diversity” as a group that is overwhelming male, white, affluent and Republican.
Three of every four trustees are male. Almost nine in 10 are white; most minority trustees are ordained ministers. This contrasts sharply with the SMU student body. Records show most undergraduate students are female and almost three in 10 are minority.
Custard said ethnic diversity is “politics,” an issue the board has no reason to consider.
“Because we are a private school, SMU doesn’t have to deal with the politics that a public school has to,” she said.
Abenni Fontenot, a senior from Fort Worth and philosophy major, disagrees with Custard’s views on diversity.
“Diversity should be on all levels,” Fontenot said. “No matter if the school is public or private, diversity is necessary.”
Turner, who sits on the board, acknowledged the campus community has no knowledge of what he called “the debate and discourse” among trustees on important issues. But he said confidentiality allows the trustees to make better decisions assuming “all components of the community [are] represented in those discussions.”
When it came time for the board to decide on whether to move forward with the biggest and most controversial project in SMU history—the George W. Bush Presidential Center—one component was certainly well-represented—Republicans.
More than half of the trustees gave money to Bush when he ran for president. Hunt raised more than $100,000 for Bush’s 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Attorney Michael M. Boone did even better, raising at least $100,000 for Bush in 2000 and at least $200,000 in 2004.
Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston introduced Bush at the 2000 Republican National Convention. At that same convention, Rev. W. Mark Craig, senior pastor at Highland Park United Methodist Church, gave the final invocation in which he thanked God for the “moral and ethical leadership” of the Republican presidential nominee and his wife, Laura Bush.
Ms. Bush has been a member of the SMU Board of Trustees since 2000. Among the many familiar faces she sees at its meetings are Jeanne L. Phillips of Dallas, who chaired President Bush’s 2005 Inaugural Committee, and attorney Antonio O. Garza, Jr., who was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Mexico in 2002 by President Bush.
The SMU trustees were presented with a library project that included a unique and controversial component—a policy institute controlled by the Bush family. When this became public, it angered numerous faculty members, students, alumni and Methodist ministers. More than 170 professors signed a petition asking for a faculty vote on the institute, which some regarded as little more than a Bush administration mouthpiece. No vote took place. Not that it would have mattered. As President Turner explained, the library complex was an all-or-nothing venture.
Inside the Ernst & Young Gallery, the trustees never heard a discouraging word. Altshuler, who raised more than $100,000 for Bush in 2000, said every single board member approved the Bush project. “It was 100 percent,” she recalled. “Everyone was on board.”
Susanne Johnson is not on board with the trustees’ decision. “It’s an abomination that we’re providing a place for a partisan institute,” said Johnson, an associate professor of Christian education in the Perkins School of Theology.
She had no illusions about what SMU’s trustees would do. “With all the cronyism and strong ties to the board of trustees, it was a foregone conclusion,” Johnson said.
What surprised and saddened her was how SMU officials handled the process.
“At Baylor, they were considering the same undertaking and they held grassroots, town hall meetings,” she said. “At SMU, the board wrapped its actions in ‘secrecy.’ The trustees waited until the 11th hour, too far down the road for the faculty to take a stance.” President Turner’s told the faculty this was a “market-based” decision and compared it to “McDonalds competing with Burger King.”
“We are an educational facility. Participatory decision-making should be our main course of operation,” Johnson said. “We are educators and that is what we teach. It should be practiced here too.”
Maria Pahigiannis has a lot of bosses, 32 to be exact. They comprise the board of trustees at American University.
They don’t have to provide the public with a wealth of online information about who they are, what they do and when they do it. But they do. Pahigiannis, assistant secretary to the trustees, said two words on the board’s homepage explain why: “Accountability and transparency.”
Christine Collins can identify with these commitments. Her 36 bosses—the Duke University Board of Trustees—believe it is important to give the public access to a wide range of documents about the board. According to Collins, students at Duke also elect two undergraduates and two graduate students to represent them on the board.
“It’s actually really simple—they are elected by the students,” Collins said. “That way, the students know who is representing their voice on the board.”
At SMU, the trustees select the student representative, period.
Matt Bridgeman agrees with the current method. He said giving students the opportunity to elect their trustee would turn it into a popularity contest.
“The person with the most frat brothers would win,” said Bridgeman, a junior civil engineering major from Corpus Christi. “And that would not represent the whole student body.”
SMU trustees said the current system ensures accountability. Professor Olness, the Faculty Senate representative on the board, said it is appropriate to hold each trustee accountable but not the full board.
“It’s like saying, ‘How do you hold Congress accountable?’ You can’t refer to them as a single entity,” he said.
Among individual trustees, some appear to follow the rules better than others.
For example, SMU’s governing documents prohibit a trustee from serving more than twelve consecutive years. Hunt has been on the board since 1976. Altshuler has been a trustee since 1988 and previously was on the board from 1968 to 1987. Prothro, who will take over as board chair in May, said she joined the board 17 or 18 years ago.
Fontenot said that as a private university, SMU can choose to keep its records closed. But he said that in doing so, the board’s decisions go unchecked.
“I guess there is really no reason to believe the board is accountable for its actions,” Fontenot said. “There is no reason to believe what they say.”
SMU’s trustees said their commitment to openness is more than a verbal promise. “We have a structure in place that is conducive to as much transparency as possible,” Prothro said.
In March, The Daily Campus set up interviews with three board members:
• Bobby Lyle is president and chief executive of Lyco Holdings Inc., a Dallas company involved in oil and gas, real estate and banking.
• David B. Miller is partner and co-founder of EnCap Investments LP, a private equity firm in Texas focused on energy.
• Jeanne Phillips is senior vice president at Hunt’s holding company and, according to her corporate biography, previously “owned and operated one of the top high-dollar fundraising firms in the United States with both political and non-political clients.”
Before the interviews took place, President Turner sent a memorandum to every trustee. It said, “Although trustees are obviously free to talk with students about university-related topics, when official positions of the board are requested, it is our general practice to have such inquires directed to either the board chair or me.”
After receiving the memo, Lyle, Miller and Phillips promptly canceled their interviews with The Daily Campus.
President Turner said his memo was not meant to discourage trustees from talking to the newspaper.
