By
A.J. RAO/Spotlight PA State College
Over the past year, the Penn State Board of Trustees and its committees held nearly 20 private conferences in which top university officials briefed members on key projects, plans, and initiatives, a Spotlight PA review of university records found.The practice potentially runs afoul of Pennsylvania’s open meetings law, according to legal and First Amendment experts.The state’s Sunshine Act permits closed-door conferences, but only if they serve as a “training program or seminar,” or are arranged by state or federal agencies. The law stipulates the sessions be “organized and conducted for the sole purpose of providing information to agency members on matters directly related to their official responsibilities.”Yet a year’s worth of meeting minutes and recordings reviewed by Spotlight PA show a pattern that potentially veers outside those boundaries. Between June 2025 and May, the board and its committees held nearly 20 private conferences that functioned less like training sessions or seminars and more like operational briefings.
Instead of a singular educational focus, conferences sometimes had multiple distinct topics, with university officials giving updates on construction projects, campus closures, budgets, contracts, and unionization.
