Normally, a presidential search committee is the voice of the university during the process of selecting a new president.

In the most recent search for a new IU President, the committee consisted of 4 trustees, a student body president, some deans and administrators, 3 faculty members, and a handful of well-respected donors and alumni.

But IU law professor Steve Sanders says something went awry in this one. Sanders says the trustees rejected all four final candidates the search committee put forward, and instead advanced four candidates of their own. Pamela Whitten had not made the final cut of the search committee, but was suddenly back on the list advanced by the trustees. She eventually got the job.

“That that should have been the perfect group to pick a new president. But somehow whatever the dynamics were, when the full board of trustees got together, they found one reason or another to reject all of the finalists. And what’s what’s more troubling is evidently they didn’t feel bound or obligated to honor to choose from among those four finalists that their own committee had recommended. Instead, they decided to strike out on their own and essentially reopen the search.”

Sanders also raised another concern in an article he published on the internet.

Sanders says the trustees made a provisional agreement to pay former IU President Michael McRobbie more than $582,000 had they not found a new president by July and needed him to stay on until December. The money was a combination of base pay and a bonus.

But, Michael McRobbie did retire on time, yet Sanders says he received the more than half-million dollar bonus anyway for “clearing his schedule.”

Sanders says that decision was made in a closed-door meeting in violation of Indiana’s Open Door Law.

“I simply don’t know what the dynamics there were other than what was laid out in a memo that the one trustee sent to the others that basically said, he changed his plans. He thought we had an agreement, and we should honor that agreement,” Sanders said.

The law professor has a long history with IU and says he struggled with the pros and cons of making the story public. In fact, before he published it, he forwarded a copy to former President McRobbie, President Pamela Whitten and other IU authorities named in the article to allow them to confirm or deny any of the findings. He heard nothing.

“I wrestled with that before I published, I shared the article with probably a dozen alumni, friends, faculty, colleagues, people whose judgment I trust to say would would revealing this serve the public interest and would it serve our use interest as you would see them and almost unanimously they said yes.”

Sanders says he hopes his article will start conversations about how decisions are made at the highest level. However, since publishing the article, Sanders says an Indianapolis law firm has been hired to legally request his emails and those of several people involved in the search. Sanders says the university will neither confirm or deny that they are behind the attempt.

“I hope it gets more people, especially my faculty, colleagues, but also other people talking about the state of the universities governance. That is do we have a board of trustees that is in touch with the rest of the university with and with its stakeholders?”