UNC system leaders recommend no action on ECU trustees secretly recorded

A University of North Carolina Board of Governors committee voted Wednesday against removing a pair of East Carolina University trustees recorded trying to woo a student to run for student body president and thus swing the majority on the university's heavily divided Board of Trustees.

What that means remains to be seen. The full Board of Governors meets Friday to consider this same question, and it doesn't have to abide by the recommendation from the board's Committee on University Governance.

Update: The university released a less heavily redacted transcript of the recorded conversation Thursday, and it is available here. Also, the student involved has been publicly identified. Her name is Shelby Hudson, and her attorney said she plans to attend Friday's Board of Governor's meeting.

The committee's vote was unanimous Wednesday, but at least one Board of Governors member made it clear he'll press the issue. The ECU Faculty Senate said Tuesday both men should be removed.

ECU Board of Trustees members Robert Moore and Phil Lewis met with an ECU student last month and pitched her on running for student government president, promising financial support and a campaign manager and asking her to keep the financial support confidential. The student recorded that conversation, and the university system released a redacted transcript in the ensuing hullaballoo, blacking out her side of the conversation.

The trustees were frank about board hardball on the recording, saying they could have voted with the current student body president to avoid a million-dollar increase in student fees, but they didn't.

"Because he - he voted against us; we didn't care," Lewis said, according to the transcript.

"And we didn't," Moore replied.

"You know, just to punish him if nothing else," Lewis said.

The ECU student body president is a Board of Trustees voting member, and the board is divided 7-6, making that vote a swing vote as new student government elections approach this month. Among other things, Moore and Lewis talked on the recording about wanting a new board chair.

Current Chairman Vern Davenport heard the recording and filed a complaint asking for Moore's and Lewis' removal. The Board of Governors, along with the General Assembly, makes appointments to the campus boards of trustees that control some campus decisions.

Moore filed a counter-complaint against Davenport and Trustee Fielding Miller, saying they should be removed, but he withdrew that after the governance committee voted Wednesday.

Moore has a second complaint pending, though, against Trustee Max Joyner, accusing him of using information he gathered as a trustee in a property deal near campus. UNC system officials have asked both sides to submit more information on that complaint.

Lewis said Wednesday that he'd heard Joyner was recruiting his own candidate to run for student body president.

ECU's leadership has been in flux for some time.

Chancellor Cecil Staton got pushed out last year, at least in part over clashes with then-Board of Governors Chairman Harry Smith. Smith, an ECU alum, then left the Board of Governors early, resigning his chairmanship first, then leaving the board entirely before his term was up.

Dan Gerlach became ECU's interim chancellor, but he resigned after pictures and videos emerged of him drinking with young people in downtown Greenville, then driving home. The controversy touched off competing investigations and exposed some of the jockeying between factions on both the ECU Board of Trustees and the Board of Governors, which is entirely appointed by the legislature.

Board of Governors member Tom Fetzer pressed Davenport for answers on the recorded conversation Wednesday, asking what he knew and when he knew it. Davenport said the student involved lived next door to former trustee Kel Normann, who called him before the student met with Moore and Lewis.

Davenport said he didn't advise for or against the meeting, and he didn't tell anyone to record it.

The student apparently withdrew from ECU just hours after the lunch meeting, and the registrar's office later told the UNC system it was for personal reasons. But in the transcript, the student seems interested in potentially running for president, Fetzer said.

Moore said that, after the initial contact, it was the student who reached back out to Lewis to set the meeting.

It was Fetzer who motioned for the committee to recommend against removing Lewis and Moore from the board.

The two trustees acknowledged Wednesday that the meeting was a mistake, and Lewis said he wished he hadn't put things quite like he did, particularly in describing the tit-for-tat vote on hiking ECU student fees. But when it comes to recruiting a student in a power play on the university's governing board, Moore and Lewis said that didn't seem out of the ordinary.

"Is this the way it's done down there?" Board of Governors member Terry Hutchens asked at one point.

"I'm new to the trustees as of July 1," Moore replied. "It's my understanding that it's kind of been business as usual. ... I think it's fairly common practice for a divided board."

Louis Bissette chimed in, saying he's been on the Board of Governors since 2011, and it's only happened twice, both times at ECU.

Though governance committee members were allowed to ask questions during Wednesday's meeting, other Board of Governors members were asked to text their questions to committee Chairman David Powers. Powers didn't read all of them, and board member Marty Kotis tweeted his unanswered questions, promising after the meeting to ask them when the full board meets Friday.

"When they say they 'didn’t give a damn,' referring to athletic fees increases, what did they mean?" one question read.

"When they say because he voted against them they didn’t care, is that appropriate behavior for a trustee?" was another.

State Auditor Beth Wood sat quietly in the audience during Wednesday's meeting. Asked after it adjourned whether her office was probing the matter, Wood declined comment.

Adam Schmidt, president of the UNC Association of Student Governments and a student member on the Board of Governors, said after the meeting that he was concerned by the lack of action.

"We have clear and convincing evidence that ... what the trustees were doing was attempting to influence a student election to advance their personal interests," Schmidt said. "I think we have to act on that. I think, if we don't, we endorse that behavior."