Editorial: Of regents, records and reasons

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002 | 8:57 a.m.

Linda Howard brought an impressive background to the Board of Regents when she was elected two years ago. She had been politically active for 20 years in Southern Nevada, earning praise for her energy and commitment to social causes. Recently, however, her behavior as a regent has been troubling.

She has admitted looking through the personnel and student records of Yvonne Atkinson Gates, who serves on the County Commission. Gates is also a part-time employee of UNLV, having filled a position for which Howard had also applied. Howard claims she was looking at Gates' personnel file because people had questioned whether Gates had received any special treatment in her hiring, salary and benefits. Howard has tried to justify looking at the student files, saying she wanted them for comparison purposes while evaluating proposals to raise student admission standards.

But Howard's rationale is hard for us to believe. We recommend that the Board of Regents change its policy allowing access by individual regents to employee and student records. If there is a valid reason, the board as a whole should be able to look at the records. One regent acting alone, however, should not have that authority.

Howard is also off base in accusing her colleagues on the board of "institutional racism" after they rejected spending $500,000 on a higher-education outreach center for minorities. The board actually voted no because statistics show that minority access to higher education is at an all-time high. With the state facing a $300 million deficit, this is no time for a service that simply duplicates the work of high-school guidance counselors and university system admissions officials. We hope Howard acknowledges that she has made some mistakes and resumes the high level of public service that she has shown in the past.