Youngstown State University Board of Trustees have repeatedly stood by their choice and the methods used in the selection of Valley congressman Bill Johnson as the next university president.
 
The board of trustees, which for state-run institutions are hand-selected by the governor, voted to approve its selection of Johnson by an 8 to 1 vote on Nov. 22.
 
The backlash from some community members, YSU staff and alumni asking for more information on the process used in which Board President Michael Peterson called the search “confidential,” but insisted that it was not done in "secret." 
 
Peterson, along with board secretary Anita Hackstedde, have pointed to what other universities have done, saying the need for confidentiality has become key to attracting candidates who otherwise might not apply if their current employers were aware they were looking for another job. 
 
In a sense, YSU is correct. 
 
The trend of secrecy in selecting leaders in colleges or universities has been growing in the U.S., skirting the public’s right to open meetings and public records, better known as the Sunshine Law, for state-run colleges and universities. 
 
YSU has cited a 2003 Ohio Supreme Court decision in which the Cincinnati Enquirer sought resumes and other related materials for candidates under consideration for the superintendent position for the Cincinnati schools. In that case, the district used a private search firm to conduct interviews with applicants and, after one applicant withdrew over concerns about their name being public, kept the remaining finalists confidential. All of the applicants were told to bring their documents with them to interviews that would be held in executive session, but that if they left the documents, they may be made public, allowing them to take the documents with them, instead. 
 
The court ruled in favor of the district and against the Enquirer, saying that the documents were not public records since the law only covers documents that are "kept" by a public institution. 
 
In the YSU case, all documents relevant to the presidential search were "kept" by Witt Kiefer, a private search firm hired by the university to help select the next president. 
 
YSU is not alone in this approach.  As recently as a decade ago, Youngstown State and the University of Akron were still holding open forums, but Ohio State and Kent State had already moved to a more confidential process for selecting presidents. 
 
By 2018-19, Akron had also changed course and began using a confidential process as well.
 
University of Akron
 
In the selection process that resulted in the hiring of Gary Miller in 2019, the University of Akron held public forums to gather information on criteria wanted in its next president. 
 
Those forums, held as a series of listening sessions, were held in person at the start of the process, in public session, to hear from anyone in the university or general public on what criteria they wanted to see in the next president. That was followed by comments collected from the campus through the university's website over two months. 
 
The search committee was made up of a representative of the council of deans, department chairs, faculty senate, senior administration, contract professional advisory group, staff employee advisory committee, university council, and Akron AAUP union members. The members were given access to all materials, and would make a recommendation to the Board, however, trustees would make the final decision.
 
The board partnered with the search firm of Witt Kiefer, the same firm that was used in the YSU search.
 
The names of the candidates who were considered, but not chosen, were never made public and all non-trustees involved in the executive sessions signed non-disclosure agreements. 
 
Ohio State University
 
When Ohio State went through the hiring process that resulted in Walter "Ted" Carter being named president, they followed a nearly identical process to Akron, with a search committee being announced, chaired by trustee Hiroyuki Fujita. 
 
Their committee was broken into two subcommittees, one made up of seven trustees and another made up of faculty members, students and staff. 
 
Every member of the committees was made public, and there were three open forums, two in-person and one virtual, moderated by the chair and co-chairs of the committees, where the public was invited to share their thoughts and concerns over what the qualities of the next president should be. 
 
The firm Education Executives was hired to assist in the search.
 
No candidates who were not selected were ever made public. 
 
Kent State University
 
When Kent State hired Todd Diacon as president in 2018, they also followed a model where the public and university stakeholders were heavily involved on the front end of the search, although they also did not disclose any of the finalists for the position.
 
A search committee was formed in their process, and the member's names were released publicly. The committee was made up of alumni, faculty, the city manager for the city of Kent, several department heads, a representative from student government and local business leaders. 
 
The search firm of Russell Reynolds Associates was hired to assist in the search. 
 
As in the cases of Akron and Ohio State, members of the general public were invited to attend open forums to give feedback at two different locations, one on the main campus and one on the Stark campus. This was in addition to an online survey and an email address set up dedicated to the presidential search.
 
So, how does YSU's search compare? 
 
Similar to the other schools, YSU also put together a committee made up of various campus constituent groups.
 
That committee was comprised of Amy Cossentino, Associate Provost and Dean of the Honors College; Holly Jacobs, VP, Legal Affairs & HR; Jennifer Lewis-Aey, Executive Director of HR; Paul McFadden, President, Foundation; Neal McNally, VP, Finance Business Operations; Jennifer Oddo , VP, Workforce Education & Innovation; Jenn Pintar, Vice Provost; Mike Sherman, VP, Student Affairs, Institutional Effectiveness, Board Professional; Brien Smith, Provost & VP of Academic Affairs; Chet Cooper, Professor, Chemical & Biological Sciences and incoming Academic Senate President; and Shawn Varso, Chief of Police.
 
Those members were joined by all of the sitting trustees, Mike Peterson, Chair, ; Chuck George, Trustee; Anita Hackstedde, Trustee; Sergul Erzurum, Trustee; Richard Fryda, Trustee; Joe Kerola, Trustee, Allen Ryan, Trustee; Laura Lyden, Trustee; Julie Centofanti, Student Trustee; Natalie Dando, Student Trustee and Molly Seals, Trustee, the only trustee who voted against appointing Johnson.
 
However, the members of the committee were never made public until after Bill Johnson's hiring had been announced and his contract had been signed. 
 
Even then, the names were never published on the university's website but rather were only made available by request. 
 
No open forums were ever held for members of the public, however an email address was set up for comments to be sent in and a survey was sent out to faculty and students seeking input on the process. 
 
Another key difference in YSU's approach was the way in which the public was notified that interviews were being conducted. While it was noted that those interviews would be conducted in executive session, the actual notice that was sent out for the interviews gave a misleading impression. 
 
Ohio law allows for public bodies to meet behind closed doors in executive session for certain specific reasons, among them discussing employment of public employees, but the gatherings still must be announced publicly, convened and adjourned in public session and no action can be taken in these sessions. 
 
YSU's director of marketing and communications, Rebecca Rose, sent out a notification of three executive sessions to be held at the Avalon Inn in Warren, Ohio on November 7, 9 and 10th for the purpose of discussing "YSU's Future State." 
 
YSU Future State is a series of discussions that began in 2020 to plan for the future of the university with relation to matters such as enrollment, funding and changes in demographics. It is not directly related to, and predates, the presidential search. 
 
Rose later admitted these sessions were when three finalists for president were interviewed behind closed doors. 
 
The other two candidates have still not been made public. 
 
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