The University Board of Trustees had some unexpected guests at the final meeting of its three-day fall gathering: demonstrators from the Service Employees International Union.
About six protesters clad in purple SEIU T-shirts dotted an audience wearing mostly business suits during the board's final meeting at the Inn at Penn on Friday. They passed out flyers to trustees and University administrators that asked for a "better life" for University security guards.
The SEIU has been coordinating Penn security guards' unionization efforts over the last several months. The guards' major complaints with their employer, AlliedBarton Security, have been low wages and a lack of benefits and training.
As a standard precaution during a demonstration, Vice President for Public Safety Maureen Rush called in one additional uniformed University Police officer to stand outside the meeting room.
The officer is "here in the event that the meeting is interrupted," Rush said. "It's our goal not to have to arrest anyone."
The SEIU representatives stood peacefully in a corner of the meeting room throughout the course of the event.
Despite the protesters, the meeting -- one of three each year at which the full board convenes for a public meeting -- went off without a hitch.
The board approved a number of administrative resolutions, including the appointment of small-animal medicine professor Joan Hendricks as dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine.
University President Amy Gutmann started off the meeting with an address that looked back on her first year as president and laid the foundation for her goals for Penn.
First on her agenda was increasing public safety, since crime on Penn's campus is up 17 percent compared to this time last year -- an issue to which the trustees' External Affairs Committee devoted much of its meeting on Thursday.
"Through ... heightened vigilance we will restore a sense of safety and security," Gutmann said. "Excellent police work by our Penn Public Safety officers has led to several arrests."
With a capital campaign looming in the near future -- fundraising will officially start within two years -- Gutmann used her speech to describe some of her broad ambitions for Penn's future.
Penn's eastward expansion is one of Gutmann's top priorities. In 2007, the University will acquire 24 acres of land currently owned by the the U.S. Postal Service, and Penn will need hefty sums to help develop the land.
This is a "once-in-a-century opportunity to redefine Penn as the eminent urban research university," Gutmann said.
She also stressed the importance of raising funds for student financial aid, an issue she has emphasized since she took office one year ago.
Executive Vice President for the Health System Arthur Rubenstein also discussed the need for new clinical facilities in Penn's hospitals.
"The hospitals are exceptionally full," he said.
