Since Gannon University’s latest Board of Trustees meeting is just a few days behind us, we at The Knight are wondering why these meetings are so secretive.

Recent inquiries have once again led to the decision that The Knight should be denied access to the meetings, but this time a university spokesman told us that the matter would be brought up for discussion to see if another potential conclusion can be reached.

These meetings could provide us with some valuable resources for our publication, and that’s obviously the reason behind us wanting to attend.

We don’t wish to go because we want to get the dirty secrets; we want to be there because it’s essentially an information board.

If something that the Knight staff needs to know about is happening, or is  going to happen, on Gannon’s campus, a Board of Trustees meeting is the best place to get that information and to reach our sources quickly and efficiently.

While we understand that sometimes things need to be discussed privately, we also recognize that meetings of this sort are open to the public for state universities, as well as local public school boards.

Gannon is a private university and therefore exempt from the state’s open meeting laws, so maybe its meetings shouldn’t be open to the public. And for the most part we might agree.

But The Knight is a student-produced publication. We are not the public; we’re part of the university. And our job is to tell the rest of the university what’s going on around here.

We thank the Board of Trustees for being willing to discuss the matter, and we hope that a conclusion can be reached that will work well for both parties.