A.J. RAO/Spotlight PA State College - Spotlight PA State College
•6/17/2026
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.
Melissa Melewsky — media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, of which Spotlight PA is a member — said the majority of these conferences “don’t appear to fit the definition” of a “conference.”
In an email, she said “updates from staff are generally not considered a training program or seminar,” adding that “their connection to conferences under the Sunshine Act is questionable.”
Amy Kristin Sanders, an expert on government transparency and a professor of First Amendment studies at Penn State, told Spotlight PA in an email that the university is interpreting the conference exception “very broadly — much more broadly than I would or that boards I’m familiar with or have sat on would.”
A spokesperson for Penn State did not respond to specific questions from Spotlight PA, including why these updates must be given in private and whether any discussion takes place at these conferences. Instead, they sent a statement saying the university believes the conference sessions “are structured to comply with the law.”
“Conference sessions in which information may be provided to trustees for the purpose of fulfilling their fiduciary duties are permitted under Pennsylvania Sunshine Law,” Wyatt DuBois, senior director of university public relations, said in an email. “The board does not take any official action during conferences.”
The substance of these conferences only became public following a June 2025 legal settlement between Spotlight PA and Penn State, which forced the university to disclose the specific topics and presenters at these closed-door sessions.
The disclosures revealed university leaders were the primary presenters at these conferences. According to Spotlight PA’s review, over the 12-month period:
1. At least 10 sessions were led or co-led by university President Neeli Bendapudi, who provided updates on topics such as unionization, state funding, the Big Ten, and “key institution priorities.”
2. At least six sessions were led by Penn State Senior Vice President for Finance and Business/Treasurer Sara Thorndike, who spoke about the budget, the Beaver Stadium renovation project, and the sales of the airport and WPSU.
3. At least five sessions involved updates on the closure of Commonwealth Campuses.
4. At least four sessions were led or co-led by Penn State Health CEO Michael Kupferman on topics including “ongoing improvements in access, patient experience, quality outcomes” and “recent financial performance and key strategic developments.”
Sanders questioned whether the conferences — given their proximity to regular board meetings and the near-unanimity of votes taken — were an “attempt to conduct public deliberation in private.”
“The topics discussed are, in many instances, clearly of interest to citizens of the Commonwealth and it is hard to believe any information provided during those sessions wouldn’t have impacted Trustees’ views on future action items,” she said. “For Penn State to keep these sessions closed from the public contravenes the transparency and accountability the Sunshine Act is designed to foster.”
Under Pennsylvania law, the Sunshine Act is triggered when a quorum of a board is actively “deliberating” — which is broadly defined as “the discussion of agency business held for the purpose of making a decision,” according to Melewsky.
She noted that if trustees are completely silent during these conferences, the law technically might not apply. However, she added that “even if the board is just listening and the act doesn’t apply, the questions become: ‘Why are these sessions referred to as a ‘conference’ and why is the public excluded?’”
“The Sunshine Act sets the floor for public access, not the ceiling; the board can be more transparent than the law requires,” she said.
This story was originally published by Spotlight PA and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
