Secret Meetings and Aliases in a Presidential Search Rekindle Debate About Openness

Doug Finger / The Gainesville Sun, via AP Images

Weeks before his name publicly surfaced as an applicant for the president’s job, W. Kent Fuchs attended multiple private meetings with members of the University of Florida’s presidential search committee, according to newly released university records.

The documents, obtained by The Chronicle through a records request, show how far a public university will go to keep presidential candidates a secret: One of Mr. Fuchs’ hotel stays was booked under a different name, “Kent Peterson.” Other times, Mr. Fuchs was identified in travel itineraries by only his initials, KF.

The sit-down talks with Mr. Fuchs were booked at Orlando’s Ritz-Carlton and Waldorf Astoria hotels — more than 100 miles from the Gainesville campus — with some presidential-search-committee members staying overnight. The meetings weren’t advertised to the public, and the conference room was reserved under a code name, “Alpha One.”

The newly released records have rekindled debate over the secrecy that hovers over many searches for public-college presidents. Professional search firms and college trustees have defended keeping certain details, especially applicants’ names, out of public view, as a way to encourage a broader pool of applicants.

But faculty and open-government advocates are repeatedly pushing back — arguing that a greater level of transparency is needed. In some states, it’s legally required.

In March, two professors at Fairmont State University, in West Virginia, filed a lawsuit against the university’s Board of Governors, alleging the board had violated the state’s Open Meeting Act by deciding presidential-search details such as candidate requirements and the process timeline in closed meetings. For months, according to news reports, the university’s search was conducted in secret.

Elsewhere, a retired University of Iowa professor filed a lawsuit in April against his former employer, alleging its presidential search violated open meetings laws when 23 committee members met outside the state and held closed meetings during the search that led to the hiring of J. Bruce Harreld two years ago.

In Florida, the state’s “Sunshine Law” requires presidential searches at public universities to be transparent and accessible to the public. When Mr. Fuchs was hired as the university’s 12th president, in October of 2014, trustees voted without discussion, and there was no public comment, according to media reports.

Trustees voted to hire Mr. Fuchs only five days after he formally applied, and two days after he was made a finalist.

Huntley Johnson, a Gainesville attorney who has feuded with the University of Florida over its handling of sexual-assault investigations and other issues, is considering a legal challenge to Mr. Fuchs’s hiring on the grounds that it violated the Sunshine Law. If such a lawsuit were successful, it could potentially void the university’s decision to make Mr. Fuchs president.

Janine Sikes, a spokeswoman for the University of Florida, stressed that the president was unanimously approved by both the university Board of Trustees and the Florida Board of Governors. She said that the university had worked to make sure its search was conducted in full compliance with the law, and that it “will not speculate” on the possibility of Mr. Johnson’s filing a lawsuit.

The university declined to make Mr. Fuchs, who was provost at Cornell University when he was applying for the Florida job, available for an interview.

Asked about the 2014 hotel booking for “Kent Peterson,” Ms. Sikes said Mr. Fuchs was not aware that a hotel room had been reserved for him under an alias. Ms. Sikes said the Orlando meetings were not publicly advertised because the committee members who attended met with job candidates on a one-on-one basis. She also stressed that, at the time of the meetings, Mr. Fuchs was not formally an applicant for the president’s post.

“None of these individual meetings were with people who had officially applied for the position,” Ms. Sikes said. The purpose of the meetings, she said, was “to talk about the University of Florida and encourage individuals to apply.”

University of Florida records show that Melissa Orth, senior director for government relations, booked the hotel rooms and chartered flights that allowed some search-committee members to have a preliminary sit-down with Mr. Fuchs and at least one other presidential candidate. Frequently, Ms. Orth reached out to hotels and charter operators from her personal Hotmail email address, and in one email exchange she specifically instructed a hotel to contact her through that account.

“Please send information to this email NOT to the other,” Ms. Orth wrote. Ms. Orth did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.

‘Raises Red Flags’

Public universities across the country have long complained that open-government laws are a hindrance to recruiting the best candidates for top leadership jobs. The risk for applicants is that their name will leak out to the media and cause complications with their current employer.

Barbara Petersen, president of Florida’s First Amendment Foundation, countered that transparency is essential, given the importance of a position like college president and the fact that tax dollars support higher education.

Florida’s open-records laws are among the strongest in the nation, and the information gathered by university search committees, including individual applications, is considered public record. All meetings associated with the search process, including vetting of applicants, are also supposed to be open to the public.

Ms. Petersen, who has provided Sunshine Law legal training to both government officials and news reporters, said the University of Florida’s conduct “raises red flags,” even if Mr. Fuchs only met with one committee member at a time.

“These sort of one-on-one, rapid-fire meetings have been found by the courts to be a violation of Sunshine,” Ms. Petersen said. “The whole purpose of the Sunshine Law is to allow the opportunity for oversight, and to hold our government accountable.”

Not all members of the 18-person search committee traveled to Orlando to meet with Mr. Fuchs, but most of them did. Records show that at least 13 committee members were scheduled to meet with him there, though not all on the same day. Some university trustees and high-ranking university administrators also traveled to Orlando to meet with Mr. Fuchs.

Echoing the university’s official position, a member of the presidential search committee told The Chronicle that, because the meetings were one-on-one, everything was legal.

“No group meetings were allowed, and I certainly never participated in one,” said Keith T. Koenig, a presidential search-committee member who said he met with Mr. Fuchs for between 30 minutes and an hour on September 28, 2014, and came away “very impressed.

“I don’t understand why you’re worried about this, what’s the issue?” Mr. Koenig said, adding that the university’s legal staff had been “very careful” about not violating any rules.

Records show that Jamie Keith, who was then the university’s general counsel, was deeply involved in the presidential search. Ms. Keith signed off on travel and other search expenses, guided the scheduling of sit-down interviews with job candidates, and ate dinner with members of the search committee and representatives from the search firm hired by the university.

Ms. Keith, who declined to comment for this story, stepped down in May amid allegations she illegally altered employee surveys that were critical of her job performance. Ms. Keith has denied making any changes to the surveys, which are public records. An internal university investigation into the matter is expected to be completed soon.

Statehouse Debates

The debate over transparency in presidential searches continues to play out in statehouses around the country. Florida lawmakers this year considered creating a public-records exemption for candidates for university president, vice president, provost, and dean. The measure, which also would have allowed search-committee meetings to be private until a group of finalists was announced, passed overwhelmingly in the Florida House, but died in the Senate.

Lawmakers who supported the measure complained that Florida’s disclosure requirements put the job security of applicants at risk and create a “chilling effect” that reduces the number of people who apply.

“The majority [of states] don’t have this Sunshine rule, requiring all applicants — even those that are not qualified — to be announced to the public,” State Rep. Bob Rommel, a Republican and the bill’s sponsor, told The Miami Herald. “When we’re competing for our universities, we need to make sure everybody possible that has talent applies here. We can’t let fear be a deterrent to come to Florida.”

One of the few House members who opposed the bill was State Rep. Joseph Geller, a Democrat. Mr. Geller has served as the city attorney for several South Florida municipalities, and is well-versed in the Sunshine Law’s requirements. Asked about the private meetings that the University of Florida held with Mr. Fuchs, Mr. Geller said such meetings aren’t necessarily illegal.

“The real question is, Did any of the trustees have any conversations with each other after they’d met him?” Mr. Geller asked.

University records show a dinner reservation for two members of the presidential search committee, Jack M. Payne and David S. Guzick, on the night before one of the meetings with Mr. Fuchs. The reservation says it was for a “party of 4,” but it is unclear who the other two attendees were.

Reached by phone, Mr. Guzick, who is the university’s senior vice president for health affairs, said he couldn’t remember who else attended the meeting. Mr. Payne, who is the senior vice president for agriculture and natural resources, did not return a phone message, but Ms. Sikes, the university spokeswoman, said Mr. Payne “said he absolutely did not have dinner with David Guzick in Orlando.”

More broadly, Ms. Sikes said the university’s presidential search included plenty of chances for the public to weigh in. The university requested feedback, she said, “regularly through the website and by email to some 245,000 people” and held “at least nine publicly noticed meetings” between May and October of 2014.

The ninth meeting, a Board of Trustees meeting held on October 15, included the vote to hire Mr. Fuchs. The Tampa Bay Times reported at the time that “there was no opportunity for public comment during the meeting.” Ms. Sikes disputed that version of events, writing in an email that every board meeting “provides time for public comment, if requested.”

There is a catch, however: the request must be made three business days in advance, which in this case would have been one day before the public knew that Mr. Fuchs was a finalist for the job.

Michael Vasquez is a senior investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeVasquez, or email him at michael.vasquez@chronicle.com.