Editorial: Balancing privacy, openness

Tuesday, May 23, 2006 | 7:33 a.m.

The search for UNLV's president was completed last week, and the university was fortunate to land David Ashley, the executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of California, Merced.

There is a part of the process about how the Board of Regents selects individuals to run Nevada's universities and community colleges, however, that needs to be changed. Specifically, that area in need of changing is Nevada's legal requirement that all the names of candidates for the presidency of a community college or university be disclosed to the public.

The search firm hired by Nevada's university system to look for presidential candidates said some people decided not to pursue the opening because they feared the repercussions if their current employers discovered that they were looking for a job. That seems a reasonable concern - being publicly identified so early in the search process could jeopardize someone's standing with his or her current employer.

Nevada's approach on disclosure is hardly common. Only four states, including ours, release all of the names of candidates seeking to be president of a public university.

We believe a better, balanced type of approach is used by our next-door neighbor, Utah. The Board of Regents in Utah has adopted a policy where only the finalists' names for a university president are made public before the board makes a final determination. This way the board can get invaluable public input on the finalists before making a decision on whom to hire.

The one area where we would part company with Utah, however, is that its Board of Regents interviews the finalists in private. While the finalists might be more candid in such a setting, we believe it is instructive to see how the candidates perform in the public fishbowl, a place where they will always find themselves if they get the job.

The 2006 Legislature should modify the open meeting law so that only the top candidates to be president of a university or community college are publicly identified - and require that the interviews be done in the open. Such an approach should bridge the concerns of the privacy sought by potential candidates - luring more qualified candidates to apply in return - and preserve the public's right to know what is going on in their government.