Five regents sued over meetings with U Iowa leader

[47of74]

Yeah, this is going on now.

A lawsuit accuses five members of the Board of Regents of meeting illegally with Bruce Harreld last summer before hiring him as University of Iowa president.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday by a retired university administrator alleges the regents violated the Iowa Open Meetings Act. It asks a judge to void Harreld's hiring, to award damages and to enter an injunction punishing regents with civil contempt for future violations.

Harreld met with four regents on July 30 at Summit Agricultural Group in Ames, the business owned by Board President Bruce Rastetter.

Rastetter has said he didn't attend the meetings. Harreld has said he requested the meetings to learn more about the job.

The board claims there wasn't a majority of the members present at these meetings.

I'm not up on the Iowa open meetings law. What constitutes a majority? Simple? Looks like this might be coming around to bite them in the ass if it's simple majority.

[emulatorloo]

1. Hope to hell this goes somewhere. Thanks for the link.

[progressoid]

2. I don't hold out a lot of hope for this but

damn, it would be great if it worked out. That whole thing stinks to high heaven.

My daughters will be done with UI next year. Just in time I think.

[Cairycat]

3. Even if they don't win the suit, maybe it will scare them into

being more open, less likely to pull this kind of crap. Well, I can dream.

One son just graduated from UI, the other has three years to go. What I'm afraid of is that profs will be replaced with cheaper adjuncts. Younger son is in a science major, so may not be as affected as if he had more of a liberal arts major.

[rurallib]

4. Sure looks like they went out of their way to avoid anyone else being there.

especially after that ruling in ?indianola? a couple weeks ago.