Thirteen members of the AU board of trustees must be removed from office and students need to be given voting rights on the board, according to Student Government president Ashley Mushnick in a letter she hand-delivered to the Senate Finance Committee chairman last week.
The 13 trustees in question are those who voted in favor of awarding former AU president Benjamin Ladner a $3.7 million severance package when he was ousted last fall after allegedly misusing university funds. In the letter, which was dated June 13 and addressed to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, Mushnick wrote of the trustees that, "despite already breeching their fiduciary duty to the university, they have refused to resign," and asked the senator for his support in passing legislation to force the removal of these trustees.
Mushnick's comments come on the heels of two recent board meetings that have resulted in seven new members on the board and a wide array of governance reforms, including the addition of one non-voting student trustee, two non-voting faculty trustees and one fully voting recent graduate trustee. Student representatives had requested three fully voting student trustees.
Mushnick told The Eagle she waited to comment for several weeks after the May 19 announcement of reforms to "let things cool down" but knew she needed to speak out.
"I pretty much decided to be honest and say, 'Ya know, we didn't get what we wanted,'" Mushnick said.
She added that she understands that the administration and the board are eager to put this past them and move out of the media spotlight. Mushnick said she would also "like to be able to return the SG presidency to a more traditional role," but said these issues need to be addressed and this is the right time to do so.
Mushnick was the sole author of the letter but said she received significant input from a Washington College of Law student representative, as well as former SG president and recent graduate Kyle Taylor.
Taylor voiced his support for Mushnick's letter, calling it "right on." Both Mushnick and Taylor acknowledged that the board did adopt some positive governance reforms at its recent meetings but both also said the board did not go far enough.
"Regardless of the structural changes, there are still issues with these individual people being trusted to enact them," Taylor wrote in an e-mail to The Eagle. "They have committed incredible wrongs with regard to the Ladner severance package, and they should no longer be serving the institution."
Mushnick expressed disappointment in her letter that the board did not contact either her or Taylor with a status report on the reform process until a week prior to the May 18-19 meeting where the reforms were voted upon, "despite numerous requests for a progress report throughout the first half of 2006."
"This short notice gave both [Taylor] and I little time to negotiate with the Governance Committee and alter the inadequacies we saw in the reforms they proposed," Mushnick wrote.
The SG, along with the Graduate Leadership Council and Student Bar Association, had proposed their own suggestions for reform in a 30-page document given to the board in early November 2005. Mushnick expressed displeasure that many of the provisions in this document were ignored by the board, including the addition of three voting student trustees, which Taylor argues is "crucial to the issue of transparency. It is the safeguard to ensure the rest of the measures are being followed."
Board chairman Gary Abramson wrote in a May 31 letter to Sen. Grassley that the faculty and student trustees, as well as the university president, will have non-voting status in order to prevent them from conflicts of interest. Former Faculty Senate chairman Tony Ahrens told The Eagle that the Faculty Senate advocated for non-voting status for the same reason.
Abramson also wrote that student leaders were overall pleased with the reforms, although "they would prefer more than one student trustee."
However, Mushnick corrected Abramson in her letter, writing that "the Chairman's understanding of our suggestion is incorrect - we would prefer voting status on the Board of Trustees before multiple non-voting student trustees."
As the board turns its attention to the search for a permanent university president, Mushnick says she will be leading the push to ensure that at least one or two students are on the presidential search committee and involved in the process.
Mushnick's letter in its entirety can be found on the SG website, www.ausg.org.
