They haven’t, and because of that there’s a thick pane of foggy, opaque glass that exists between the board and the student body; a glass that doesn’t become any more transparent the more you wipe away.

The board sat down around 9:00 a.m. on April 11 to a mixed audience. Protesters in support of Palestine have become common in the last year of meetings, sometimes disrupting them to the point of suspension and other times just sitting quietly. This particular meeting followed a day after 19 protesters were arrested for a sit-in, so this time they would not seek to disrupt. But nonetheless there’s still a tenseness, if one of them gets up to use the restroom a flock of heads in the audience would rubberneck to the protestors in anticipation.

Amid all the drama, a more-than-typical amount of votes were not unanimous; three of the ten.

Trustee Mike Balow voted no on all three.

Back in the fall, Balow ran on a campaign promise of breaking down MSU’s “green wall of silence,” a metaphorical lack of transparency that he believes has been an issue at the university for years. To combat that, he said he’s tried both to dissent when he isn’t satisfied with a bill and be more vocal when he does so.

This kind of dissent isn’t exactly common among the MSU board, at least publicly.

Going back through 2020, around 94.4% of the board votes were unanimous. This number represents a thick layer of opacity that exists between the university and the MSU community.

When I asked if he was comfortable with that number, Balow said he wasn't.

“Anyone who knows statistics and odds and human nature, knows that most things aren't unanimous,” he said. He added that his dissent was primarily due to a lack of information on the bills, something he voiced publicly during the meeting. He made it clear that he wasn’t against progress, and now that the bill is passed, he’ll support it anyway.

But if a vote is eight to zero, he’s skeptical.

Balow acknowledged that some votes are rudimentary or routine and thus, should be unanimous. “But I reject the premise that the college or the university and the public are served by everything happening behind closed doors”

In most cases, public bodies such as local government boards and committees would be required to have their meetings open to the public. And while the MSU Board of Trustees do have semi-monthly meetings, they’re not exactly required to per the Michigan Open Meetings Act.

Although the Michigan constitution requires state universities to hold “formal” meetings in public, what is considered such is widely up to the university and has no hard, legal definition.

The issue was taken up by the Detroit Free Press in 2014 when they filed suit against the University of Michigan for holding some board meetings behind closed doors. Free Press legal counsel Herschel Fink argued that making decisions and deliberating on issues behind closed doors prior to voting on them in public meetings was a violation of OMA. A Michigan appeals court ruled in favor of the university in 2016, and the Michigan Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Now, MSU is doing the same thing, without the threat of lawsuit. 

The Board meets privately on the Thursdays before their public Friday meetings in what they call ‘workshops.’ These private meetings, which run from seven in the morning to seven at night, are packed with topics that are then executed via vote the following day, Balow said; a system which he’s not entirely opposed to, despite his frequently expressed desire to increase transparency.

“The question is, is the public better served by [that system] or not?” he said. “I'm of the opinion that, in order to have frank discussions with people, you can't do all of that in public. But we should show more to the public. We can get better at that,” he said.

When asked if it’s possible for agenda items to be pushed back or taken off the agenda entirely in the workshops, Balow said that it can indeed happen.

But when it does, it should happen for “good reasons.”

The planned demolition of IM West was objected to by board members for a number of reasons, according to Balow. In that case, he said the board realized “maybe it's not going to pass, or maybe it's going to be four to four.” The conclusion, he said, was to take it off the agenda and think about it— something he considers a good thing.

“We will try to support each other where we can, to try to reach consensus,” he said. “And when we can't, there's a variety of things that can happen. You'll see five to three votes like today. You'll see things getting pulled from the agenda, which I would argue are better for the school because they foster more transparency,” he said.

For Fink, however, the issue is much bigger and more pressing than people tend to give it credit for. When universities hold meetings in private he finds it concerning considering the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent by the board with what he considers no oversight by the voters.

It’s especially concerning for him when there’s almost never a dissenting vote among the board members. “Talk about being opaque, my gosh,” he said. “I can't imagine what would be more opaque and less transparent than the way the trustees and the other two big boards are.”

He said that, while at the time of the lawsuit there was bipartisan interest from legislators, the issue has failed to gain traction since then.

There’s three more board meetings planned in 2025: One in June, October and December; leaving only half as many meetings as there are months left in the calendar year. And while more meetings could be beneficial to the rather secretive board, it wouldn’t do much so long as the board has the ability to have private meetings before their public ones.

Like many issues with the board, the problem is primarily rooted in outdated or flawed legislation that is scarcely given attention by lawmakers.

Balow’s promise of transparency, and to an extent his action on the subject, is a breath of fresh air for MSU. As he told me, he wouldn’t have run for the position if he truly believed that the board was doing a good job.

But if he has no issue pulling items from the agenda for the sake of fostering "transparency," then it makes me wonder how committed he really is to changing things around here.