Meek
A local dentist is among 12 people seeking to join the board of trustees at Indiana University.
IU has nine board members, six of which are appointed by the governor and three who are elected by alumni. One trustee must be a student approved by the governor.
Dr. Joseph Meek, a dentist at Greenwood Smiles, is running for a spot on the board because of his “general concern” for higher education. He is a Bargersville resident and Center Grove High School graduate, who has earned two degrees from IU, a bachelor of science in biology and a doctorate in dental surgery.
Meek hopes to be the second Johnson County resident to be an IU board member. The first county resident to join the board was David Demaree Banta, who served from 1882 to 1889. Banta was also a judge and dean of the IU law school.
The trustee election comes amid criticism from faculty and students about the handling of protests in Dunn Meadow on the university’s Bloomington campus earlier this year. IU faculty have called on IU President Pamela Whitten and Provost Rahul Shrivastav to resign or be removed, according to the Indiana Daily Student, IU’s campus newspaper.
The board of trustees controls most aspects of the university, including employment, selling land and setting tuition, Meek said.
Meek would bring a “fiscally responsible” approach to the board. He would also seek out different perspectives to try to come up with a solution that works for both sides, he said.
“I really try to take everyone’s perspective at heart,” Meek said. “I try to see the conservative viewpoint and I try to see the liberal viewpoint and try to balance and get a happy medium.”
His top priority is a fiscal constraint for the university and handling the faculty’s and student’s perceived lack of confidence in the university’s president, he said. A majority of IU Bloomington’s faculty voted they had no confidence in Whitten following the April protests, the IDS reported.
Meeks doesn’t know if he would vote to remove the president if elected, but the situation does concern him, he said.
“If you equate a university to a sporting team, sometimes you have to change the coach,” Meek said. “And doesn’t mean he’s a bad coach, doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t mean he doesn’t work hard, but when the players — aka the students and the faculty lose confidence — it’s hard to leave. … I don’t think you have a good university if everybody’s on the same table.”
Meek, who attended IU amid protests for the university’s divestment from South African companies to protest the apartheid in the 1980s, said Whitten made the decision to prohibit encampment prematurely. She should have discussed the decision with the student body and at least given them 72 hours to leave.
Meek believes protesting should be allowed, but restrictions could be placed on it. Some ideas for that are ensuring that only members of the university community are protesting on campus, and permitting it during the day, but not overnight.
Meek would also like to look into graduate students’ pay. Graduate students have been protesting, and at times striking, for better pay over the last few years. He’d like to approach the idea of raising pay with a “balanced mind” to ask where the money will come from, he said.
Education is too expensive, Meek said. Some majors that have only a handful of students in the department should be looked at more closely to examine where money is best spent, he said.
“I think as a leader, you have to look at the need, what’s offered and you may have to cut a program, you may have to eliminate a department for the better good of the university,” Meek said.
Another focus of Meek is advocating to make the freshman experience a better experience. He is familiar with the new student experience, as four of his six children have gone to IU, with Meek’s youngest daughter heading there this fall.
“I don’t think the university did a great job of integrating kids, to get kids to know people on the floor,” Meek said.
All graduates of IU are eligible to vote in the trustee election. The IU trustee election will go live at 12:01 a.m. June 1 and will close at 10 a.m. June 28. Alumni can vote online at dataforms.iuf.iu.edu/trustee-election/vote, or in person.
The IDS has also profiled all 12 candidates. To see those profiles, go to shorturl.at/MdrqQ.
