Tuesday, February 23, 2016

UA Board schedules "routine" Thursday meeting at DoubleTree

With few details available, the embattled University of Akron Board of Trustees has scheduled a meeting at  3 p.m.  Thursday - two weeks after the board had met at its regularly scheduled meeting on Feb. 10.

The board normally convenes every two months in the Student Union.  When I asked a member of the board's staff about the schedule change  (it doesn't appear in the online schedule)  he  huffily responded that it was a purely routine meeting.

However,   some  critics of the. board and President Scott Scarborough  are speculating that the  board could be  moving on something far more consequential than routine business.

Will there be some form of action against Scarborough, who has suffered one defeat after another at the hands of the faculty academics?   The Senate Faculty recently passed a 50-2  no confidence resolution.

In response to my questions about the meeting, UA  spokesman Wayne Hill released a statement confirming the meeting, at the DoubleTree in Fairlawn,   adding that the Board's Finance & Administration committee will meet  "for the purpose of conducting an Executive (non-public)  Session...The committee meeting will be followed by a previously announced special meeting  of the Board for a dinner and information  session at 6 p.m."  Hill said "no formal actions will be taken".

There's been plenty of talk that Board chair Jonathan Pavloff has been meeting with a number of heavy hitters around town in the  wake of the waves of reaction against Scarborough's board-sanctioned rebranding and  other measures that passed  uninterrupted before their eyes.

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