Deliberations in Darkness
UVA Board of Visitors before entering closed session last week
Last week the University of Virginia Board of Visitors (BOV) met to discuss one of the most contentious public-policy issues roiling American politics today: the medical treatment of transgender youth. The meeting was closed to the public, and board members were enjoined not to reveal what was said.
The justification for keeping the deliberations secret? The meeting, prompted by an executive order from President Trump, would disclose the advice of UVA legal counsel and supposedly reveal sensitive information about UVA Medical Center business operations.
In another recent development, UVA announced that after a year-and-a-half of withholding taxpayer-funded reports on the 2022 slaying of three UVA football players, it was finally preparing to release the documents to the public. But first, it was sharing the report with the families of the murdered students to give them “the opportunity to read the reports” and meet with University officials.
Happy Perry, mother of D’Sean Perry, one of the murder victims, told The Daily Progress the university needn’t have bothered. Redactions blacked out a majority of the report. “There’s nothing in there. They [have] taken everything out. … There’s nothing in it that we want to know.”
The refusal to release the full report is only the most blatant example of the mockery that UVA has made of openness and transparency. The University has gutted the Freedom of Information Act by declaring vast swaths of documents to be exempt presidential “working papers,” and by charging exorbitant search fees for many other requests. (Read about FOIA travails of my colleague at The Jefferson Council, Walter Smith, here.)
Meanwhile, closed sessions at BOV meetings have become so routine that board members have stopped asking if the secrecy is justified.
Here were the grounds for moving into Friday’s closed session cited in the BOV agenda:
Consultation with legal counsel and legal advice regarding (1) the Board of Visitors’ Authority to make regulations and policy concerning the University; (2) the University’s posture regarding compliance with Executive Orders and the potential impact on the business of the Medical Center; and (3) Certain Care/Procedures Performed at the UVA Medical Center and Clinics, during which there will be a discussion of proprietary business related and competitively sensitive information pertaining to the operations of the Medical Center.
The board dutifully followed procedure and voted to approve the move to closed session.
Before scrutinizing the reasons given for excluding the public, let’s refresh our memories of the exemptions that Virginia’s public meeting law allow. The law permits governing boards to go into closed session to discuss litigation so agencies can avoid tipping their hand about legal strategy or other sensitive legal matters. It exempts discussions that might compromise the privacy of employees (or, in a university context) students. And it exempts matters that would potentially harm a business enterprise (like a hospital) by revealing proprietary or competitively sensitive information.
Do any of these exemptions apply to Friday’s meeting?
Let’s take the justifications one by one.
The stated purpose of the meeting in item (1) was to talk about the BOV’s authority to set regulations and policy. That is a governance issue — a governance issue informed by references to state code and regulations, perhaps, but a governance issue nonetheless. Explaining the legal context of a governance question — if that’s in fact what occurred — does not reveal legally sensitive information.
The justification in item (2) is lamer than the first. Compliance with Trump’s executive order might have a “potential impact” on the UVA Medical Center. So what? Sure, UVA could lose up to $400 million in federal research dollars if it doesn’t play ball with Trump. But UVA’s reliance upon federal funding is public information! A glow worm has enough brain cells to figure out that the economic impact would be negative. Are we to believe that the Board went into closed session to prevent the release of information that is already public?
The justification in item (3) is no better: UVA performs certain “care/procedures” — presumably related to the medical treatment of transgender youth — that are described as “proprietary” and “competitively sensitive.” I call B.S. First, I question whether UVA has any “proprietary” protocols for administering hormones or conducting breast surgery, and I question whether revealing those protocols would harm UVA Health’s competitive standing with the two other hospitals (Virginia Commonwealth University and Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters) that conduct transgender procedures in Virginia. Second, and more to the point, even if UVA does have proprietary procedures, I question whether they were discussed, much less relevant to the question of whether UVA should conform to Trump’s diktat.
Read the resolution passed by the Board of Visitors. First and foremost, it asserts the authority of the Board to establish university policy. Secondarily, when the resolution does address the transgender issue, it focuses on the moral/ethical imperative to avoid abruptly disrupting care for transgender patients. It makes no reference to legal or business issues.
In sum, the grounds for moving into closed session are fabricated and specious.
The decision of whether to comply with Trump’s executive order is a contentious public policy issue. According to a New York Times poll, seventy-one percent of respondents said they were opposed to administering puberty blockers to minors. But backers of “affirmative care” are passionately intense in their conviction. The public is entitled to hear what the UVA administration, UVA counsel, and individual BOV members have to say.
UVA has a 50-person team to pump out official pronouncements, feature stories, videos, podcasts, and social media content. If you’re looking for feel-good stories about UVA’s dance company, the first snow of 2025, or President Ryan’s workout with the football team, you can find it all on the UVA website. But if you’re interested in governance or public policy — the budget, tuition and fees, DEI, intellectual diversity, or the debate over the medical treatment of transgenders — you’re out of luck. UVA shrouds its decision-making in darkness. That must change.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
