Surprise Full UofL Board Meeting Today.

With 24 hours of notice, a meeting of the full newly appointed University of Louisville board of Trustees will be held. A main item on the limited agenda is approval of a budget for the current academic year. It contains the controversial 5% tuition increase and at least one other mandatory fee increase directly affecting students. I suspect that President Ramsey and /or his aids felt great pressure to approve a budget before the judicial hearing today in Frankfort following which the very legitimacy of the Board may be prolonged for some time more.

It is difficult to believe there has not been much discussion among Board members and the administration ahead of this meeting out of public view. I wonder how that could have been done without triggering open meeting requirements? The fiasco of the first meeting of this Board over apparent violation of open meeting law sharpens the focus on how the University and its Board of Trustees conducts their business. If the matter today is handled in a rubber-stamp manner we will be able to see the future. No human being can grasp the UofL budget in a single week!

Will President Ramsey attend?
Dr. Ramsey’s name does not appear on the agenda. I wonder if he will be there at all. If he is present, he will likely be mobbed by media which will not let him get away twice without an interview. If he is not there, it will say a lot about his future at UofL.

Will Faculty concerns be addressed?
The faculty constituency has concerns that issues related to faculty salaries and promotion & tenure decisions will continue to put on hold. Their current faculty representative in her final month on the Board will have an opportunity to at least put those career-altering issues on the table. They are at least as important as the granting of degrees to our students.

Medical Center on Display.
Acting Vice President for Medical Affairs Dr. Postel is scheduled to give an update on Health Sciences Issues. The Medical Center has been prominently in the news and there is increasing discussion among faculty about unwinding the agreement with KentuckyOne Health to manage its clinical affairs. It will be interesting to see what topics are singled out for presentation to the Board. In my opinion, the status of the Medical Center and its research initiatives are currently a source of considerable liability to the University in terms of reputation and financial stability.

Executive session.
A mysterious-sounding “Business Proposal” is scheduled to be discussed in executive session. I wonder what that will be about? We may never know.

Aside from the particular facts on the table, today’s meeting will offer insights into how this particular Board and the University administration will do business in the future.

Peter Hasselbacher, MD
Emeritus Professor of Medicine, UofL
21 July 2016