Although the Board of Regents postponed a vote to allow time for discussion about the proposed Board policy changes, the two weeks left for discussion is not enough time to adequately get the universities’ points of view across to the Regents.

The Board postponed voting on the policy changes until their next meeting because Regency university committees requested more time to state their case. The Joint University Advisory Committee was only able to arrange adequate representation to face the Regent’s at Thursday’s Board meeting.

A solution to the Regency universities’ problems with the proposed policy changes will not be met by simply firing Regents Chancellor Roderick Groves. These changes cannot solely be coming from him, or the Board would have already taken stiff measures against him and/or overridden the proposal.

If a viable solution is to be found in such a limited amount of time that would benefit NIU and the other Regency schools, it either must be obtaining a separate governing board for NIU or sweeping out the dirt at the Regency level by assigning new people to fill the positions on the Board.

Operating under such time restrictions, NIU is left with few alternatives. NIU can either wait it out and live with the Board’s decision, or break away from the whole system and create our own board. At the very least, it is time to replace the Board members with people who really have all the schools’ best interests in mind.