LANNY DAVIS: A Darkness At Yale: The university offers little explanation for changing a 90-year-old governance policy.

Yale’s Latin motto is “Lux et Veritas”: “Light and Truth.” Yet the Yale Board of Trustees has acted in a way contradicting these two important values. The board’s May 24 decision to eliminate trustee nominations by alumni petition outside the board’s own processes is contrary to good corporate-governance principles, which aim to give all stakeholders a voice. And the process by which the trustees reversed the practice of allowing alumni petitions, which dates back to 1929—without notice, abruptly, without any input from alumni—is indefensible.

Trustee Catharine Bond Hill, a 1985 Yale graduate and former president of Vassar College, made matters worse when she announced the decision. She stated that the alumni petition process created divisive “issue-based candidates” and “cause-based elections.” But she presented no facts to support that conclusion.

Making matters worse, the letter was borderline insulting. It offered no justification for the secretive, abrupt process of announcing a reversal of a policy that had stood for nearly 100 years. Why? Shouldn’t the trustees have explained the reasons why this decision had to be made hastily, without open debate, immediately ahead of the next annual round of trustee nominations?

They don’t think they owe anything to anyone.