"There is a distinct lack of transparency in the way that the Board of Trustees functions. In the past month, we researched the Board of Trustees heavily but kept running into barriers to information. We were able to find out about a few of the committees’ purposes, like Educational Policy which decides what professors get tenure, Buildings and Grounds which makes decisions about where to tear down and build new facilities, Honorary Degree which decides who should be nominated for honorary degrees and commencement speakers, and University Finance which determines future tuition rates. However, there is no way to find out who is on which committee. There is no way to find out if the leaders of Peabody, Ameren, Bank of America, Monsanto, Arch Coal, Boeing and other corporate powers are making decisions about who receives tenure or how much support survivors of sexual violence should have available.
"This is unacceptable.
"...The agendas of each meeting are kept confidential, and student representatives are bound to confidentiality. The barriers to transparency are very carefully constructed to keep students from finding out the inner workings of our school. What is the university so afraid of?
"The Board of Trustees is completely closed off to the student body, yet every single student is influenced by the decisions made behind closed doors. Voices are eliminated. The right to contribute to university decisions is taken away from those directly affected and is given to an elite system. This is indicative of which voices the university actually values."
- Current Student Voice on the Board of Trustees, 2014
"This is unacceptable.
"...The agendas of each meeting are kept confidential, and student representatives are bound to confidentiality. The barriers to transparency are very carefully constructed to keep students from finding out the inner workings of our school. What is the university so afraid of?
"The Board of Trustees is completely closed off to the student body, yet every single student is influenced by the decisions made behind closed doors. Voices are eliminated. The right to contribute to university decisions is taken away from those directly affected and is given to an elite system. This is indicative of which voices the university actually values."
- Current Student Voice on the Board of Trustees, 2014
Board Members of Note
Click each board member's photo to explore their LittleSis.org profile.
Andrew Taylor, Executive Chairman of Enterprise Holdings & Director of Keefe Group
Taylor is (in)famous for owning one of the largest private prison service providers in the United States. Based in the St. Louis area, Keefe Group profits from the mass incarceration of black and brown people throughout the U.S. by providing a variety of services (including commissary and phone and email accounts) to prisoners and their families at exorbitantly high prices. More information: PowerBehindThePolice.org
Taylor is (in)famous for owning one of the largest private prison service providers in the United States. Based in the St. Louis area, Keefe Group profits from the mass incarceration of black and brown people throughout the U.S. by providing a variety of services (including commissary and phone and email accounts) to prisoners and their families at exorbitantly high prices. More information: PowerBehindThePolice.org
Greg Boyce, Recent CEO of Peabody Energy
Re-elected to the board May 2015 for another 4-year term, Boyce runs the largest private-sector coal extraction company in the world, destroying rural Illinois farming communities and displacing over 12,000 Navajo and Hopi people. Headquartered in St. Louis, the company utilizes its connection to city hall and its fleet of lawyers to avoid paying taxes, diverting funds from St. Louis' under resourced public schools. 2014 pay: $10,994,083.00 More information: PowerBehindThePolice.org and StudentsAgainstPeabody.tumblr.com
Re-elected to the board May 2015 for another 4-year term, Boyce runs the largest private-sector coal extraction company in the world, destroying rural Illinois farming communities and displacing over 12,000 Navajo and Hopi people. Headquartered in St. Louis, the company utilizes its connection to city hall and its fleet of lawyers to avoid paying taxes, diverting funds from St. Louis' under resourced public schools. 2014 pay: $10,994,083.00 More information: PowerBehindThePolice.org and StudentsAgainstPeabody.tumblr.com
George Paz, Chairman and CEO of Express Scripts, President of Civic Progress
Paz heads Express Scripts, St. Louis's public company with the highest revenue last year. Despite making a profit of $1.9 billion last year, Express Scripts has been siphoning money from public spending in the form of tax breaks--in particular, a $15 million tax break from the state of Missouri in 2011. Additionally, many Express Scripts jobs are minimum wage, and numerous employees call for change, citing abysmal treatment of workers on the Express Scripts corporate campus. Under Paz's management, Express Scripts has also been responsible for thousands of lay-offs and has been been caught committing federal health insurance fraud. 2014 pay: $12,921,006.00 More information: PowerBehindThePolice.org
Paz heads Express Scripts, St. Louis's public company with the highest revenue last year. Despite making a profit of $1.9 billion last year, Express Scripts has been siphoning money from public spending in the form of tax breaks--in particular, a $15 million tax break from the state of Missouri in 2011. Additionally, many Express Scripts jobs are minimum wage, and numerous employees call for change, citing abysmal treatment of workers on the Express Scripts corporate campus. Under Paz's management, Express Scripts has also been responsible for thousands of lay-offs and has been been caught committing federal health insurance fraud. 2014 pay: $12,921,006.00 More information: PowerBehindThePolice.org
Hugh Grant, CEO of Monsanto
Board term: May 2015- May 2019
Hugh Grant is the CEO of Monsanto, a multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation headquartered in Creve Coeur in the Greater St. Louis Region. Grant made $13.4 million in 2014. In a recent Harris Poll, Monsanto was ranked the fourth most-hated company in America. It has been widely criticized for a variety of issues, including its production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), marketing of agrochemicals that have been called “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization, and common practice of unjustly suing and subsequently bankrupting small farmers whose fields have been contaminated with Monsanto’s seeds. Monsanto is the 18th largest employer in the St. Louis region. It has received over $13 million in state tax subsidies.
source: PowerBehindThePolice.com
Board term: May 2015- May 2019
Hugh Grant is the CEO of Monsanto, a multinational agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation headquartered in Creve Coeur in the Greater St. Louis Region. Grant made $13.4 million in 2014. In a recent Harris Poll, Monsanto was ranked the fourth most-hated company in America. It has been widely criticized for a variety of issues, including its production of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), marketing of agrochemicals that have been called “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization, and common practice of unjustly suing and subsequently bankrupting small farmers whose fields have been contaminated with Monsanto’s seeds. Monsanto is the 18th largest employer in the St. Louis region. It has received over $13 million in state tax subsidies.
source: PowerBehindThePolice.com
Craig Schnuck, CEO of Schnucks Grocery, Chair of the Board of Trustees
If you are a WUSTL student you will probably visit Schnuck's grocery store on Clayton at some point during your time at WashU. Schnuck is criticized for expanding food deserts by closing grocery stores over the past few years in low-income areas of the city.
If you are a WUSTL student you will probably visit Schnuck's grocery store on Clayton at some point during your time at WashU. Schnuck is criticized for expanding food deserts by closing grocery stores over the past few years in low-income areas of the city.
The complete list of the board members can be found at boardoftrustees.wustl.edu.
The 3 Camps of the board
Administration has explained to faculty that board members tend to fall into one of three camps: the wealthy old St. Louis money; the people who have personal connections to WUSTL and tend to be younger and more engaged; and the St. Louis corporate executives, whose membership is part of a business relationship with the school and tend to be less directly engaged in committee work.
Terms and Committees
Board members serve 4 year terms. Re-election--if you can call it that--is determined by the Nominating and Governance Committee. As with the other committees, it is not publicized who serves on this committee.
Student representation
Student representatives to the board are only allowed to sit in on certain committees and they sign a gag-order at the beginning of their term. In the fall of 2014 students looked into Current Student Voice on the Board of Trustees.
Just a few of the Board of Trustees'
interlocking business relationships
Interact with the map and add click on the arrows and names to learn more.