Bad blood among ECU trustees leads to a flurry of charges. UNC leaders must sort it out.
A months-long power struggle between members of the East Carolina University Board of Trustees has to led to a series of charges and countercharges about meddling in student elections, recorded conversations and allegations of a setup aimed at some board members.
The governing body of the UNC System will try to sort it all out at a meeting Wednesday.
The two sides agree on one thing: that two ECU trustees met with a young woman last month to talk about her running for student body president at ECU.
But one side says that the meeting was a setup, that the woman doesn’t attend ECU now and that she was instructed to attend and record the meeting under false pretense.
The other side says this can’t be a setup because the two trustees initiated the contact in the first place and the recorded conversation shows they were trying to meddle in a student government election.
The UNC System Board of Governors, in a meeting at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Chapel Hill, will decide whether the trustees’ actions were wrong or not.
The meeting between the student and trustees
The lunch meeting between ECU board members Phil Lewis and Robert Moore and former ECU student Shelby Hudson took place Jan. 13 in Greenville. There, Lewis and Moore offered to donate to her campaign and help her win the election if she agreed to run for ECU student body president, records show. Students can start campaigning Wednesday, and voting takes place Feb. 19-21.
Hudson ran for office last year, which is likely why Lewis reached out to her.
The two trustees talked about their dissatisfaction with the current student body president and the ECU trustees board chairman. They described two sides of the trustee board that are at odds and discussed pursuing a leadership change on the board, records show. Hudson could help them accomplish that because the student body president is a voting member of the trustee board and could be the swing vote.
Lewis and Moore said in a letter to the UNC System board that they met with Hudson with “the best intentions of furthering the higher interests of the University.”
But ECU Board of Trustees Chairman Vern Davenport and two other trustees filed a complaint with the Board of Governors, saying Lewis and Moore violated board policy in the “Duties, Responsibilities, and Expectations of Board Members” and possibly the North Carolina State Government Ethics Act.
How the meeting came about
Lewis sent a Facebook message to Hudson in January asking her to talk about an ECU issue, according to her attorney, Hoyt Tessener.
She agreed to meet Lewis and Moore for lunch, knowing the conversation was probably going to be about student government elections.
Hudson is a family friend of Kel Norman, a former ECU trustee, and reached out to him to ask about Lewis and the situation. After talking to Norman, Hudson was uneasy about going to the lunch alone and decided to record the conversation on her phone, Tessener said.
When she took the meeting, Hudson was enrolled at ECU, but has since withdrawn for personal reasons and is no longer an ECU student, according to Tessener.
She told Norman how the meeting went and decided to give the recording to ECU general counsel Paul Zigas. Norman said that as a former board member, he felt that the issue needed to be reviewed by the university attorney and the audit committee.
“It’s major violations,” Norman said. “In no way should board members try to manipulate and control an election for the student body.”
Norman said the student body president’s position on the trustee board “is just as important if not more than all the other 12 members because they represent the student body,” Norman said. “They are a voting member and should be respected as so.”
But according to ECU trustee Jim Segrave, Lewis and Moore set up the meeting to see whether they could encourage Hudson to run for student body president again and that there’s nothing wrong with that.
“They didn’t go there with any malicious intent,” Segrave said.
“The two board members in question still have my support,” Segrave added. “Their objective was in the interest of doing what was best for ECU, and in their minds that was to change leadership.”
The problem, Segrave said, is that Davenport, Norman and ECU board vice chairman Fielding Miller knew about this proposed meeting and that Hudson was instructed to go and record it to use against Moore and Lewis.
“There isn’t any question they were set up by the chairman and vice chairman,” Segrave said.
Segrave told Davenport in an email about the situation that he understands board members have been recruiting students to run for student government for years, yet no one else has been asked to resign because of it.
“I understand that the two members you have asked to be removed recruited this student likely in an attempt to gain the votes necessary to replace you as Chairman. No doubt that is irritating to you. But even if this was the motivation, they did this in the interest of what they thought was best for ECU. Many members may or may not agree but that is why we have a board and why we vote,” he wrote.
Davenport responded to Segraves’ email asking to discuss the situation over the phone.
Tessener said Hudson was not coached by Davenport or Miller about the meeting and had never spoken to either of them. Tessener also said it can’t be a setup because Lewis initiated the contact and planned the lunch meeting.
“They’re trying to make an entrapment defense,” Tessener said. “How can you be entrapped when you set up the contact and make the contact?”
Should university trustees try to influence student elections?
The redacted transcript and a text message show that Lewis and Moore offered to make a confidential donation to Hudson’s campaign, connect her with a campaign manager with ties to many North Carolina political campaigns and the state legislature, assist with signage and billboards, get support from ECU trustee and former ECU student body president Angela Moss and collect information from the ECU student affairs office. They also promised not to vote to raise student fees.
Tessener said Hudson gave the recording to the ECU general counsel given what the two men were offering her. No one on the board advised her to do that, he said.
“When you listen to what was said and offered … the description of bribery was absolutely correct,” Tessener said. “The danger with this is everyone is trying to characterize it or bring up stuff that’s not at all relevant. You look at your oath and then listen to this tape, that’s the evidence.”
Segrave argues the meeting never would’ve happened without the influence of Norman and ECU board leadership.
“I think we need to all start acting like adults,” Segrave said. “As the chairman and vice chairman, if they knew about this in advance they had multiple opportunities to fix this.”
He said Davenport and Miller could have advised Hudson not to go, they could have called their fellow board members and advised them to be careful about what they did or told them not to go at all.
“They took it as an opportunity to smear two of their board members in an attempt to try to get them to resign from the board,” Segrave said. “This is a mess that could’ve been avoided.”
Segrave also said he is concerned that the issue was brought to the UNC System board without a consensus among ECU trustees.
“The action taken against these members is an example of another unilateral decision made without a second of discussion with your board,” Segrave wrote in an email to Davenport. “This approach marginalizes the rest of the board members. It will never build consensus or develop the trust needed to work together as an effective team advocating for ECU.”
Lewis, Moore, Davenport and Miller have not responded to requests for comment on the situation.
When reached by phone Monday, Lewis said they are leaving the issue in the hands of the Board of Governors and “it’ll play out” this week.
There’s no denying the tension over who should lead the board. But the question at hand is whether university trustees should get involved in student elections.
The answer is expected to come out of the Board of Governors Committee on University Governance meeting Wednesday. The committee members will discuss the complaints and consider potential sanctions, which could include the removal of ECU trustees.
Meanwhile, ECU’s student government is setting new rules to protect the integrity of their elections in response to what happened.
Current ECU student body president Colin Johnson sent a message to students saying that candidates will now be required to report all campaign contributions or offered campaign contributions and students will be immediately disqualified if they accept a campaign contribution by a trustee. He said candidates will also be required to sign an ethics statement “affirming their commitment to a high ethical standard and spirit of service to their fellow students.”
“Let me be clear — what was discussed in this meeting is offensive and represents a clear attempt to interfere in the SGA elections process,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson said that trustees Lewis and Moore violated their ethical duties, and he encouraged students to sign an online petition demanding their removal. It had more than 1800 signatures Tuesday afternoon.
This story was originally published February 4, 2020 at 3:50 PM.
