Henderson State University's board of trustees is to discuss measures that would restrict the panel's own speech and actions, including members' visits onto the publicly supported campus.
The discussion, set for the board's Sept. 14 meeting on the Arkadelphia campus, comes as the university has grappled with severe budget problems, faculty discontent and a chasm on the board where trustees Brown Hardman and Eddie Arnold often appear at odds with the other five trustees and President Glen Jones.
A draft document obtained under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act says each trustee "shall adhere to" nine principles," including one to "notify the campus executive [president] as a matter of professional courtesy when a Trustee visits" the campus.
"I'm not going to go with that," Arnold said of the visitation item.
"I certainly have reservations about several of the items that I've read," he said.
Another principle is that each trustee "shall avoid direct intervention in academic, financial, student, athletic, or administrative affairs of any of the campuses in the System." Henderson also has a campus in Hot Springs.
The measures also say each trustee is to "address matters of university administration or of executive action only through the President."
Hardman and Arnold have spoken publicly of their disagreements on issues such as spending priorities at a time when the university is recovering from a $3.2 million deficit at the start of the past fiscal year.
The board approved a balanced budget for this fiscal year, which began July 1, but only after budget cuts and after tenured faculty members approved a no-confidence vote in Jones and three vice presidents. Jones quietly renewed the vice presidents' contracts, and the board is to consider his contract this month. His five-year contract is normally extended one year annually.
J.R. Davis, a spokesman for Gov. Asa Hutchinson, said the governor's office would have no comment on the Henderson matter because "that's an issue [between] Henderson State and the trustees."
The governor appoints trustees of the state's public colleges and universities.
A sample outline for a board "governing document" lists several "prohibited activities," including one barring trustees from disclosing information obtained during the board's executive, or closed, sessions.
A similar prohibition was proposed earlier this year for the University of Arkansas System's trustees but was never approved.
Also obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the Henderson outline says "no individual Trustee shall purport to act on behalf of the Board as a whole without express authority given by the board to do so."
The document says the board chairman "ordinarily is entitled to 'speak for' the Board" and the president for the university.
Arnold countered: "No one board member speaks for the board. I don't know that anybody speaks for the board.
"If somebody asks a board member why they voted for something or why they voted against, I think they have the right and duty" to answer those questions since trustees are public officials, he said.
In past interviews with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Arnold and Hardman have stated their opinions and explained their votes. They have not claimed to be speaking on behalf of the full board.
Trustees who more often side with Jones are Chairman Bruce Moore, Johnny Hudson, Deborah Nolan, James Barnes and Ross Whipple.
Earlier this year, the outgoing chairman of the University of Arkansas System's board, Ben Hyneman, offered a proposal to revise that board's policy, which lays out rules for the panel's standards of conduct, conflict of interest, disclosure and prohibited activities. Among other things, Hyneman's plan would have allowed only the board chairman to speak for the panel as a whole.
At the board's January meeting, "Trustees very briefly mentioned it and no action was taken," Nate Hinkel, UA System spokesman, said in an email Thursday. The proposal "was basically tabled."
HSU spokesman Tina Hall said the documents came about as a result of an agenda item on board policies at the trustees' summer retreat. That item "prompted questions about policies at other universities," she said.
Elaine Kneebone, Henderson's general counsel and chief compliance officer, was asked to compile that information for the board. "There is no proposal or policy -- only the information that has been gathered as a result of the request at the Board retreat," Hall said.
NW News on 09/03/2018