Eastern’s Board of Trustees approved the addition of one year to University President David Glassman’s contract with all but one vote in favor of the extension.

The new contract does not include any changes to salary or benefits. Under his current contract, Glassman receives a $325,412 salary and health insurance, life insurance and workers’ compensation benefits.

Glassman said in his State of the University address on Oct. 6 that he plans to retire from the position after the end of this last year of his contract and return to being a professor of anthropology.  

Student Trustee Payton Ade was the only board member to vote against giving Glassman the extended contract.  

Ade said that directly after Glassman announced his intention to be president for one last year, Ade started a process of asking students around campus how they felt about it. 

They said they put more weight on opinions from student leaders and that they especially spoke to members of EIU Pride, the Black Student Union, the Latin American Student Organization, the Residence Hall Association and the National Residence Hall Honorary as groups that may be especially affected by or aware of administrative action.  

“I would get usually mainly two different comments. One of the comments would be, ‘He’s the president, I don’t have really opinion on this,’ or I would get a hard ‘no,’” Ade said. “While technically I am a trustee, I feel myself as more of a student representative on this board and not someone who was voted in to vote the way that I feel. I want to vote the way that the students think.” 

The Board also approved four purchases that total $2,617,078.78.

The purchases included a two-year contract for trash collection and disposal services, a project to repair the north steps of Booth Library, a contract for bond advisory services and a revision to a previously approved purchase for a media production and newsroom management system for WEIU-TV.

The Board Vice Chair, Phillip Thompson, announced that Eastern’s new University Police Department Chief will be Marisol Gamboa. She will start on Jan. 4.

After the second reading of a revision to Board Regulation II.7.e, the board approved a change that will close all university facilities on Juneteenth when it falls on a weekday.

An honorary degree for Carl Mito was also approved by the board, giving him the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters.

Glassman also gave his President’s Report, which is a standard part of the Board of Trustees meeting, but he brought in guest speakers rather than delivering a report personally.  

The first group to speak included Tanya Willard, the director of the Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity, as well as Izzy Hernandez and Ian Stobaugh, residents of the Doug DiBianco Living Learning Community.  

The DiBianco LLC is a group of dorms intended for students who are in the LGBTQ+ community to live together and benefit from a safe environment and programming intended specifically for that group.  

The LLC just formed before the Fall 2021 semester, meaning that the current group of students living there is the first group.  

Hernandez, who is the current resident assistant for the community, presented comments from students who have benefited from living in the Doug DiBianco LLC.  

The second part of the President’s Report was delivered by Michael Gillespie, a sociology professor who performed research that helped determine how a food pantry on campus could help students, and Beth Gillespie, the director of civic engagement who currently helps operate the food pantry. 

The EIU Campus Food Pantry opened Oct. 31. The presentation showed data on how many students have made use of its services during the first month of operation.  

Luke Taylor can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].