UNC panel takes no action on ECU trustee meddling. Full board to discuss issue Friday.
After hearing much discussion about the deep division on the East Carolina University trustee board, a UNC System committee voted to take no action Wednesday against two ECU trustees who tried to get involved in the university’s student government election.
The full UNC Board of Governors will discuss the issue at its meeting Friday.
ECU trustees Phil Lewis and Robert Moore met with Shelby Hudson in January to encourage to her to run for ECU student body president for a second time. The two, who offered to donate to her campaign, were interested in gaining her future support as a voting member of the ECU Board of Trustees, with hopes of changing that board’s leadership.
The UNC System board’s Committee on University Governance on Wednesday discussed how the meeting between the trustees and Hudson occurred, what was said during the meeting and the intentions of the trustees.
Hudson recorded the lunch meeting, where Lewis and Moore also talked about their dissatisfaction with the current student body president, the ECU trustees board chairman and the two sides of the trustee board that are at odds with each other. Hudson expressed interest in running and talked about her previous campaign.
She was enrolled at ECU when Lewis reached out to her asking to meet about ECU issues, but she has since withdrawn for personal reasons, according to her attorney, Hoyt Tessener.
Hudson gave the recording to ECU general counsel Paul Zigas to review the situation. She did so with the help of Kel Norman, a family friend and a former ECU trustee.
Lewis and Moore said in a letter to the UNC System board that they met with Hudson with “the best intentions of furthering the higher interests of the University.”
But ECU Board of Trustees Chairman Vern Davenport and two other trustees filed a complaint with the Board of Governors, saying Lewis and Moore violated board policy in the “Duties, Responsibilities, and Expectations of Board Members” and possibly the North Carolina State Government Ethics Act.
UNC board members question ECU trustees
At Wednesday’s committee meeting, Board of Governors member Tom Fetzer opened up the questioning and initially asked Davenport to drop the complaint based on the fact that the student is not currently enrolled at ECU.
Davenport denied that request, saying he has an obligation to ECU students and faculty to uphold the policies of the UNC System and state ethics.
Davenport then walked the board members through the process of how he found out about the recorded meeting and met with ECU trustees Fielding Miller and Vince Smith about what to do with it. He said he wanted to protect the student and consider the ongoing ECU chancellor and UNC System president searches.
He then discussed the allegations and implications with UNC System leadership to ensure he was taking the correct steps with the complaint. Davenport later added that he asked Lewis and Moore to meet to discuss an issue, but did not reveal the context of the meeting. They were unable or unwilling to meet on short notice, so Davenport asked them to resign that day. They refused, so Davenport filed the complaint.
Fetzer asked Davenport about his knowledge of the meeting between the trustees and Hudson and about his potential role in orchestrating the recording of it. Davenport said he was told that Lewis had requested the meeting but did not know what it was about and did not help facilitate the recording.
Fetzer also questioned why Hudson had the conversation with these trustees expressing her interest in the election when she had no intention of being a student this spring. Her attorney was not present to speak on her behalf.
Davenport was also asked by board member Terry Hutchens why he didn’t discuss the issue with the full ECU board. Davenport said he made a judgment call and wanted to keep it from getting out into the public. He said he decided the support of the vice chairman and secretary of the ECU Board of Trustees was enough. He later added that he sent supplemental information to other board members after the complaint was filed. Those members are on Davenport’s side of the division on the ECU board.
Lewis and Moore were also thrown questions from BOG members asking why they met with the student and whether that was how they do things in Greenville.
Moore said they were “gauging her interest” because she’d run in the past. He said there was no maliciousness behind the meeting and that if he knew the lunch meeting would bring this much attention he wouldn’t have taken it. Moore also said that meeting with potential student candidates is “business as usual,” particularly when there’s a divided board.
Board of Governors student member Adam Schmidt and board member Marty Kotis, who are not on the governance committee, seemed to be the most interested in addressing the conduct of Lewis and Moore based on the transcript.
They each had a list of questions about whether Lewis and Moore knew Hudson was a student, their attempts to secure future votes, their punishment of the current ECU student body president and discussion of ECU’s athletics budget. Not all of their questions were addressed because of time constraints, but will likely come up at the full board meeting Friday.
Schmidt also wanted to know why they asked the student to keep it quiet if there wasn’t an impropriety.
“The issue is that we need to make sure that people in positions of power, university administrators, trustee members, Board of Governors members, all of those people are also acting with the same ethics to ensure that we are given a free and fair chance to choose who we want to lead our student bodies and who we want to represent us,” Schmidt said after the meeting.
He said he’s concerned about the ECU trustees’ actions and the role of student leaders because students need to be able to represent themselves, interact with these individuals and make decisions about the future of their universities.
“We cannot endanger the role of the student and we need to protect the principle of shared governance in student leadership,” Schmidt said.
During the meeting, Board of Governors member Lou Bissette expressed a similar concern about contact with students. He said students are young and trying to do the right thing and should not be pressured by board members to make decisions.
“If it’s not clear how trustees or how a trustees member can engage with students, then we need to make it clear,” Bissette said. “It’s not fair to put them in this type of position that they’ve been put in in Greenville.”
Is ECU’s division too wide to repair?
It was made clear throughout Wednesday’s meeting that the ECU trustees are deeply divided. While each side wants what’s best for the university, the power struggle between them is what’s creating these issues.
Board of Governors Vice Chairwoman Wendy Murphy addressed that head on, asking whether the division is too wide to repair or whether the trustees can find a way to work together and put aside personal issues.
“I do not think it’s too wide to repair because East Carolina is too important to just wash under the table and say that we can’t repair,” Moore said. “We’re adult,s and we should be able to get in a room and work out our differences and find some things that we agree on.”
Moore said he’s asking this committee to help ECU come to that point and bring the Board of Trustees together so that members can move forward.
Lewis said he agreed with Moore.
“I would love to work with my fellow trustees to make East Carolina better, and I am so sorry to be here today,” Lewis said.
Davenport said ignoring this incident is not going to unify the board and that the behavior of Lewis and Moore is a clear example of what’s causing the division.
“If you ask me why it is that I don’t sweep this under the rug it’s because of the consistency of that behavior,” Davenport said. “That pattern of that behavior is what’s dividing our board.”
Davenport noted that the recent actions of Moore and Lewis come on the heels of the investigation of former ECU interim chancellor Gerlach. Gerlach resigned from his position amid a UNC System investigation after photos and videos of him out drinking at bars near campus spread online. Lewis and Moore were heavily involved in the investigation, and Davenport said they committed several policy violations during that process.
Lewis and Moore conducted their own investigation into the matter, suggested it might be a setup and had a confidential meeting with Gerlach before he was interviewed by UNC System investigators. They told Gerlach they were pulling for him, offered him “support and advice” and told him that “someone had organized the attack on him,” according to a UNC System report about the Gerlach investigation.
Lewis complained about the UNC System investigation, called it ridiculous and a waste of time and money, the report says. Moore also complained about the investigators the system hired.
Both trustees refused to provide their phones for imaging and did not provide text messages to investigators, according to the report.
But Lewis and Moore have said that that they weren’t non-compliant in the Gerlach situation and that the request for the content on their phone was overly broad.
Davenport said he organized a dinner meeting with UNC System leaders shortly after the Gerlach situation to clear up the obligations and conduct of board members, and the policy and ethics guidelines. He said they agreed to move forward with ECU business as a unified board.
Less than two months later, Davenport said this incident happens and it’s his obligation to call it out.
“If we want a unified board this conduct has to stop and we have to fulfill the obligations of adhering to policy and understanding our ethical obligations,” Davenport said. “The one word that’s in trustees is trust.”
Support for removal of ECU trustees
ECU students and faculty have also called for Lewis and Moore to be removed from the board.
ECU student body president Colin Johnson sent a message to students saying that the trustees in question interfered in the SGA elections process and violated their ethical duties. He encouraged students to sign an online petition demanding their removal, which had more than 2,200 signatures Wednesday.
The ECU Faculty Senate officers said they were “deeply disturbed” by the issue and asked the Board of Governors to remove Lewis and Moore from the ECU Board of Trustees.
In a memo Tuesday, they said leaders must “exercise authority honestly and fairly, free from impropriety and threats, favoritism, and undue influence” as required by UNC System policy.
“The attempt by Trustees Lewis and Moore to influence a student government election and trade favors for Board votes, in our view, represents a clear violation not only of UNC policy but also of the minimal expected standards for ethical and responsible leadership.”
The full UNC Board of Governors will meet in special session at 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 7 in Chapel Hill to receive and act upon the report and recommendation from the committee.
The full board has the ability to remove Moore because it appointed him. Lewis was appointed by the N.C. General Assembly, so any board recommendation on him would have to be approved by the state legislature.
This story was originally published February 5, 2020 at 3:18 PM with the headline "UNC panel takes no action on ECU trustee meddling. Full board to discuss issue Friday.."
