Penn State students want to be heard, so they’re running candidates for the board of trustees

When Farnaz Farhi got an email from a Penn State student last summer, she wasn’t even sure it was real.

The sender, Nora Van Horn, said she was recruiting candidates to run for the university’s mostly white and mostly male board of trustees as part of an effort by a group of students and young alumni called Penn State Forward that wants to elect younger, more diverse trustees. Their effort, which prioritizes climate change, educational equity, student safety, and transparency in governance, is patterned after a similar push at Harvard in 2019.

“I found out that not only was it real,” said Farhi, a 2010 graduate whose thesis on sexual violence brought her to Van Horn’s attention, “but she is an incredibly committed and dedicated student advocate who has been championing these causes for a while, and I feel honored to have been contacted by her.”

Now, Farhi, 33, an Iranian-born OB/GYN at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, is one of three alumni candidates that the student group hopes to get elected this spring to the board, a volunteer body that sets policy and strategic direction, approves an annual budget and tuition rates, and provides broad oversight for everything from academics to athletics.

Also part of the slate are Ed Smith, 38, who got both his bachelor’s and master’s at Penn State, where he served as president of the student Black Caucus, and now works for the Kresge Foundation, promoting college opportunities for students from marginalized groups, and Christa Hasenkopf, 41, an atmospheric scientist and 2003 graduate who founded an open air-quality database, the first to make information readily available in any location.

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All three said they had not thought about running until they were contacted by Van Horn, founder of Penn State Forward.

“That was incredibly moving,” said Hasenkopf, who works for a small air-quality consulting organization in Annapolis, Md. “I’m all in.”

Smith, who as an undergraduate in the early to mid-2000s advocated for more attention to college affordability, racism, and other issues affecting first-generation students, said that if elected, he would like to “create a formal and ongoing process that elevates the voice of young alumni.”

For too long, Van Horn and others on her team say their voices have gone unheard, the issues they care about not front and center.

“I am tired of having trustees who only care about football or the legacy of Joe Paterno,” said Erin Brown, a 2021 graduate from Bryn Mawr, who is in Kosovo completing a Fulbright scholarship. “I want trustees who believe in something revolutionary that can make Penn State a stronger university.”

Van Horn, a senior from Loretto, a borough near Johnstown, said students for years have been pushing but not seeing enough action on climate change, diversity and inclusion, sexual assault, and other issues.

“It felt like it was not being responded to by administrators and governing boards,” said Van Horn, who is studying philosophy and Mandarin.

Zachary McKay, a 2021 graduate and former student body president who also is a member of Penn State Forward, said student leaders in November 2020 asked former board leaders to support a climate action plan that included divesting the university’s endowment portfolio from fossil fuels and were told that’s not really what students want.

“We were shocked,” said McKay, who works in Virginia. “Leaders ought to listen to the people they are there to serve rather than their own corporate interest, which I think the board has done quite often.”

In 2021, McKay said, 91% of students who voted in student government elections supported a referendum that asked the university to divest from fossil fuels.

Penn State said its investment strategy is guided by one criteria: “to focus on investment return, which leads to increased revenue to support university programs.”

But the university has not made any direct investments in exploration and production energy companies since 2019 and recently approved a $25 million commitment to a sustainability fund.

Board president Matthew Schuyler said that trustees have met with student leaders on the issue and that their opinions are “diverse.”

“The board fully recognizes the importance many students attach to priorities for our environment and sustainability overall,” said Schuyler, chief brand officer for Hilton. “We share a commitment toward ongoing progress in these areas.”

The Penn State Forward candidates are vying for three open seats among nine on the board elected by alumni, about a quarter of the more than 30 seats on the board. Others are appointed by the governor, elected by agricultural societies, chosen by the board itself, or serve as a result of their position in state government or within the university.

The three candidates put forth by Penn State Forward will have competition, including the three incumbents — Bill Oldsey, a 1976 graduate and educational publishing executive; Ted Brown, a 1968 graduate and CEO of Ketch Consulting Inc.; and Barbara Doran, a 1975 graduate and CEO of BD8 Capital Partners LLC, all more than a quarter century older than Penn State Forward’s oldest candidate. Also among others running is Maribeth Schmidt, a 1988 graduate who has led Penn Staters for Responsible Stewardship, a group that was highly critical of the university’s handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse scandal.

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Doran said much of Penn State Forward’s platform already has the support of the board. She pointed out that the board in 2020 voted to set as an “aspirational goal” having at least 50% of its members come from racial-, ethnic-, and gender-underrepresented groups within five years, up from 32%.

Van Horn said the group means no disrespect to the other candidates.

“It’s not like we are running against folks,” she said. “We are running for ideas.”

Van Horn said her group of about 20 got started about a year ago after hearing about Harvard Forward, a group of young alumni there who got four candidates on the university’s board of overseers.

Decades ago, Harvard alumni also got involved when they were trying to persuade the board to divest from South African holding companies because of apartheid. They successfully got Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had received an honorary Harvard degree, on the board.

Nathán Goldberg Crenier, a 2018 Harvard graduate who participated in the more recent campaign, said his group’s work came amid a larger movement at Harvard to push for fossil-fuel divestment, including students taking over the football field during halftime of the Harvard-Yale game in 2019. Harvard said last year it would not invest in fossil fuels, a major victory for activists, given Harvard’s prominence and large endowment, exceeding $53 billion last fall.

“We’re proud to have been a part of that confluence of events,” said Goldberg Crenier.

At Penn State, students sought candidates via word of mouth, recruited them to apply, and then created a selection committee with representatives from various organizations. Candidates still have to get 250 signatures of alumni to get on the ballot. The Penn State Forward students said they don’t anticipate any problems getting those signatures.

Farhi said she’s glad she agreed to run. She recalled how her undergraduate years at Penn State were shaped by volunteering as a domestic and sexual assault counselor for hundreds of hours at the local women’s resource center, where she would answer hotline calls and accompany victims to the hospital for exams. Fall of her senior year, there was a large number of sexual assaults reported on campus, she recalled. In her thesis, she reflected on the barriers victims face accessing resources and how Penn State could do more to help.

Now, if elected, she hopes to give back what she’s learned.

“I realize even if all three of us get elected, we are only three of a much larger board,” she said. “But we have to start somewhere.”