This election season, voters in the state will fill two seats on the governing boards of Michigan’s three largest universities, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University.

The state constitution gives statewide elected boards overall oversight of each institution’s finances, as well as the hiring of top university positions, including its president. The eight members of each council serve staggered eight-year terms, with candidates nominated at party conventions.

Wayne State University Board of Governors

Mark Gaffney and Michael Busuito are running to hold seats that expire in January.

Gaffney is a Democratic candidate. He is a retired Teamster and past president of the Michigan AFL-CIO. He teaches in Wayne State’s work program.

He says he is proud of the work the council has done during his tenure and wants to continue that work.

“We want to continue to increase graduation rates,” Gaffney said. “We want to increase diversity. We want to be more welcoming to all types of students and we want to better promote the great news about Wayne State University.”

Gaffney points to Wayne State’s status among research universities and says he wants to make sure it’s accessible to students who face both economic and academic challenges.

He says all students should feel they have a place and a voice at the university, adding that recent student protests around the Gaza conflict and university investment have challenged the university to strike a balance between sometimes competing viewpoints.

Working Class Party nominee Suzanne Roehrig says she visited the pro-Palestinian student camp on campus in the spring and believes the university should do more to protect students’ rights.

Roehrig says she was eight months pregnant when she started at Wayne State, making it difficult to juggle the responsibilities of being a single parent and schoolwork. Roehrig studied education and library science and worked as a teacher and librarian in Detroit and Ferndale.

She says her education came at a financial cost and she believes college should be free.

“In the richest country in the world, there is more than enough money to make this a reality,” Roehrig said. “The working class produces what is needed to run our society. They have the right to a free education.”

Rasha Demshkieh, the other Democratic candidate in the race, came to the US from Syria when she was 19. She is an alumna of the Wayne State School of Pharmacy; served on the Port Huron Area School District board for 13 years; and served eight years on the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.

Demashkieh says he would like to see the diversity of Wayne State’s students and faculty reflected on the board and wants the university to be a bigger part of Detroit’s cultural and economic development.

“I wanted to be a part of being able to push in that direction where we provide different opportunities for our students,” Demashkieh said. “When you give them a good job that helps Michigan’s economy … we want our students to stay in the area.”

Republican businessman and Wayne State graduate Sunny Reddy is also on the ballot, along with Farid Ishac of the Libertarian Party, William Mohr of the Taxpayers Party USA, Sami Makhoul of the Green Party and Kathleen Oakford of the Natural Rights Party .

Voter’s Guide: Learn more about the candidates running for the WSU Board of Governors.

Michigan State University Board of Trustees

There are no incumbents running to retain their seats on the Michigan State University Board of Trustees this election cycle. Eight candidates are vying for the two seats left vacant by board members Democrat Dianne Byrum and Republican Dan Kelly, whose terms expire in January.

Rebecca Bahar Cook, a 1992 MSU graduate and parent of two Spartans, is the Democratic nominee. She has worked for several political campaigns and has served on the Ingham County Commission and on public and nonprofit boards. She says one of her biggest concerns is the cost of tuition.

“Michigan State was founded to be the university for ordinary, ordinary Michiganders who want a higher education,” Bahar Cook told WDET. “I think there needs to be some sort of re-engagement to keep college affordable.”

Mike Balow says he’s probably been to every board meeting for the past four years. The Republican candidate jokes that some people call him the “ninth trustee.”

“The state of Michigan has had its own set of very public and private challenges over the past decade,” Balow said. “I became very unhappy with the fact that the administration there and the board dealt with the issues in an open, honest, transparent and direct manner.”

Balow says the university’s handling of the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal and its survivors was “detestable”. And he also says that the tuition is too high.

Green Party candidate John Anthony La Pietra says the party believes college should be free.

While not a former Spartan himself, he trained there when he was preparing to teach English as a second language in Japan decades ago — and says he later joined campus protests against the Iraq war. He wants to make the university a place he would be happy to send his own daughters to one day.

La Pietra suspects he’s quite different from current and typical board members.

“I am someone who is independent of the big money or big influence that seems to be prevalent in the University Council,” he said. “It’s almost like legacy positions in some ways.”

La Pietra says the university has mishandled recent student protests and that he objects to the way the students were “punished.”

Democrat Thomas Stallworth III says he was politically active as a student at MSU and thinks it’s important to give students space to do so.

Stallworth served two terms in the State House. He says MSU helped him find his talents and led him to a successful life and career.

He says he is concerned that recent crises have caused conflict among board members. It hopes to bring some stability to the body.

“We’re at a point where we really need to learn from the experiences we’ve had,” Stallworth said. “The Nassar incident, the campus shooting, the firing of the football coach… These are all events that have resulted in significant, traumatic experiences for students, staff and the state. We need to focus on understanding how we can perform better.”

Julie Maday is also on the ballot for the Republican Party, along with third-party candidates Janet Sanger and John Paul Sanger of the US Taxpayers Party and Grant T Baker, representing the Libertarian Party.

Voter’s Guide: Learn more about the candidates running for the MSU Board of Trustees

University of Michigan Board of Regents

Republican candidate Carl Meyers has run for the UM Board of Regents several times before. He says with six of the current eight members being Democrats, it’s hard for Republicans to win a seat on the board.

Meyers says one of his concerns is how expensive a UM education is and how much debt students and families are taking on to finance it.

“My mission is to increase access to the university system by controlling costs, which will increase diversity,” Meyers told WDET. “If the University of Michigan is anything but the Uber rich, that’s a bad thing.”

Democrat Denise Ilitch is the only incumbent running for re-election. Ilitch has held her seat since 2008 and says she has been “laser-focused” on accessibility. The program that makes tuition free for most families in the state was created while she served on the board.

She says her work on the council has also included supporting an independent office to report sexual misconduct.

Ilitch says that when students complained that it was hard to get mental health services on campus, she advocated for the expansion of counseling and psychology services.

“I’ve been advocating to put more resources into this so that students can see therapists and counselors much faster, especially if they have an emergency or a crisis at hand,” Ilitch said.

Republican Sevag Vartanian graduated from Michigan in 1991. His son graduated from the school last year. He says that to lower tuition, the university will have to have different priorities.

“It has a huge budget, especially with the health care system,” Vartanian said. “We need to look at what is essential to the student experience and what is not. And you have to make tough decisions and you have to cut programs that don’t have a positive net present value return on them.”

Vartanian also says the university has too few seats for Michigan residents, relying on higher out-of-state tuition to fund its projects. He points to the Ross School of Business expansion planned for California.

There are six candidates running for two Regent seats that expire in January.

Other candidates in the race include Democrat Shauna Ryder Diggs, Libertarian Andrew Chadderdon and Donna Oetman of the US Taxpayers Party.

Voter’s Guide: Learn more about the candidates running for the UM Board of Regents.

The general election is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. For the latest election information, visit the WDET Voter Guide at wdet.org/voterguide.