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Al Miller, "Doesn't Pass the Smell Test"

[Note: This material is copyright by the Des Moines Register, and is reproduced here as a matter of "fair use" for non-commercial, educational purposes only. Any other use may require the prior approval of the Des Moines Register.]

The Board of Regents, which governs a $3.5 billion enterprise, meets eight times a year. It would be irresponsible for the regents not to communicate between meetings. Were that communication by telephone or over lunch, there would be no record. E-mails provide a record, and that record is easily attainable. In the last two months of 2006, the board office responded to 25 freedom-of-information requests for e-mails between or among regents. Letters, of course, are also part of a public record, but I don't think anyone has actually written a letter since my father died.

Any board must have informed members. If the members of the CIETC board had e-mailed more often, perhaps they would have known more of what was going on, and that scandal could have been avoided.

Michael Gartner, president,
Board of Regents,
Des Moines

The current Iowa Board of Regents gives powerless people another reason to invent another God.

The current scenario in Iowa has a dastardly group of egotistical and incompetent appointees with the license to maim and destroy. The botched search for a university president is only the a whiff of a cesspool.

Al Miller
Clive