The O’Collegian

Critics of the OSU regents’ closed process for hiring university presidents should not expect the next search to be more transparent or open to the public.

An Oklahoma A&M Board of Regents subcommittee was created to evaluate the hiring process after candidates for university president complained the 33-person search committee was too large to effectively keep their names secret. The subcommittee recommended no changes to the policy used to hire Burns Hargis as OSU president in December.

Hargis was the committee’s only recommendation and the only candidate to meet with faculty, staff and students in a forum. A news release announcing his appointment by unanimous approval was distributed before the regents voted publicly.

Critics of the process say members of the public should be able to voice their opinions about the candidates and be given enough information to form those opinions.

It seems that in OSU’s process, “public opinion can’t be voiced at all,” said Kip Purcell, an open government advocate.

Faculty Council Chairman Bob Miller, who served on the subcommittee, said the group was created after candidates for the presidential search complained.

“We seemed to have a number of candidates withdraw because they felt the process was not secretive enough,” Miller said.

Miller would not say how many candidates withdrew for that reason but confirmed it was more than one.

The subcommittee’s objective was “to make sure that any kind of search that went on was done in such a way to attract as many qualified applicants as possible,” Miller said.

“If a recommendation came out of it, it was at most to say there should not be a standard mechanism in place,” Miller said.

Regents contend the process must be secretive or top candidates will not apply.

“If you want mediocrity, then it’s pretty easy to have an open process; but it may not be the very top tier of leadership,” Chairwoman Lou Watkins said.

She said quality people often don’t want the public to know they’re interested in changing jobs.

“In some cases, they will lose their job if they’re interested in moving on,” she said. “It’s very difficult to work out. If you open it up all the way, often, your really, really top people will say, ‘I don’t want to be publicly paraded around unless there’s a really good chance that [I’m] going to get the job.’”

However, many colleges and departments on campus reveal the names finalists for deans and department heads, university spokesman Gary Shutt said.

“It is fairly standard practice for the hiring entities to schedule some type of forum during the campus interview that is open to a variety of groups, but there is not a policy that requires a forum be held,” Shutt said. “Individual colleges establish their own internal procedures on the format of campus interviews for department heads and school directors.”

The College of Human Environmental Sciences released the names of finalists in March 2007 when it was seeking a dean, and the School of Journalism and Broadcasting is holding open forums with four finalists in its search for a director.

Nevertheless, Watkins said completely open searches generate only mediocre candidates and people actively seeking jobs. Those candidates don’t mind an open search, she said.

“Sure, those people will do whatever it takes to get around to get another job,” Watkins said.

Fear of disclosure has not discouraged some OSU officials.

In April 2006, Provost Marlene Strathe was named one of three finalists for the presidency at the University of Nevada at Reno, and former OSU President David Schmidly was hired for the top position at the University of New Mexico in an open process.

New Mexico law requires the names of five finalists for university president be released, said Purcell of the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.

“Our organization has argued for many years that complete openness is going to result in the strongest applicant pool,” Purcell said. “There’s no empirical evidence to the contrary.”

Purcell said the university provision of the law was the result of a compromise.

The law forces other government agencies to make available the names of all candidates, not only finalists, he said.

The university provision was added in the 1990s after universities complained completely open searches would deter the strongest candidates from applying, he said.

Purcell said he has seen no empirical evidence strong candidates are discouraged from an open process.

“I’m not saying that the regents are ever obligated to hire the person that the majority of the public wants to see in that seat,” Purcell said. “We think the public is entitled at least to see how the regents are doing their job.”