Penn State’s Board of Trustees on Monday voted to remove a frequently outspoken member, citing code of conduct violations related to an interaction with a university staff member last summer.
The board voted 30-4 to oust alumni-elected trustee Barry Fenchak, just two weeks before his term was set to expire. Joining Fenchak in voting against removal were fellow alumni elected trustees Ted Brown, Anthony Lubrano and Jay Paterno. Trustees Ali Krieger and Dan Onorato were absent.
The two-thirds vote in favor of removing Fenchak means he is prohibited from serving as a trustee in the future.
The incident at the heart of Monday’s vote occurred on July 19, 2024 following a board meeting at the Altoona campus. Fenchak told a junior female staffer that when he wears a ball cap he “looks like a penis with a little hat on,” a remark he later said was a quote from the 1992 movie “A League of Their Own.”
Penn State’s Office of Ethics and Compliance investigated after the staff member filed a complaint, saying the interaction made her uncomfortable and that she felt she could not exit the conversation because of Fenchak’s position. Two witnesses confirmed her account and described the remarks as inappropriate. Fenchak said he intended it as self-deprecating joke and regretted if he made anyone feel uncomfortable.
The interaction happened days after Fenchak filed a lawsuit against the board after he said his requests for information about the management of the university’s $4.6 billion endowment and its rising administrative fees, and later about the athletic department’s 10-year agreement with ticketing and fan engagement firm Elevate, were repeatedly denied.
Fenchak and board leadership have had a contentious relationship throughout his three-year term, resulting in multiple lawsuits over the last year. He said on Tuesday that the incident with a staff member was being used as a pretext to remove him because of his demands for financial information, questioning of decisions and criticisms of how the board operated.
“The only harm being mitigated here is the harm to the desires of board leadership to operate without transparency, without honesty, without responsibility and without accountability,” he said. Chair David Kleppinger said he did not agree with Fenchak’s “characterization of board leadership, but we will not debate that here today.”
Those who spoke in favor of his removal said the complaint from the staff member was a serious matter that warranted his expulsion.
“Eyewitness accounts of the interaction verified Mr. Fenchak’s lack of respect for women, professionalism and moral judgment,” said Tracy Riegel, one of seven women trustees who authored a letter denouncing Fenchak’s behavior last fall. “Furthermore, he publicly passed the interaction off as a joke. Women represent over 50% of Penn State faculty and staff and 46% of our students. The Penn State Board of Trustees is the governing body of the university and must hold themselves to the highest professional and ethical standards. By taking this action today and removing Mr. Fenchak from the Board of Trustees, we send a clear message to the university community that this unacceptable behavior will not be tolerated.”
Fenchak said that board leadership provided him notice of the charges on Aug. 23 against him five days before it received a preliminary report and two weeks before he was interviewed by the ethics office. The notice, he said, “was a titillating charging document laced with very distorted interpretations of the facts, at least the facts that board leadership wanted to be true, and obviously those those distortions remain today.”
The board’s governance committee voted in September to recommend his removal and scheduled a vote for October. That vote, however, was halted when Centre County Judge Brian Marshall granted a request for a preliminary injunction, writing that Fenchak “provided uncontradicted evidence of retaliatory behavior” against him by board leadership because of his requests for information the university claimed was protected by confidentiality agreements and not essential to his role as a trustee.
After Fenchak and the board reached an agreement for him to review the documents, Marshall granted Penn State’s request to lift the injunction on May 16, writing that Fenchak “can no longer maintain that he is subject to removal from the Board in retaliation to these specific requests.”
Fenchak told StateCollege.com on Saturday that the board resumed looking to schedule a vote on his ouster as early as May 23.
Speaking in favor of his removal, trustee Kelley Lynch said on Monday that Fenchak’s remark could not be dismissed “as a boys will be boys exchange or “just locker room talk.” She and other women were often told early in their careers to “just get over it” when they were made uncomfortable by such comments or worse, Lynch said.
“But this is now 2025. This isn’t the ’90s, it’s not the ’80s, or even earlier. When someone finds the courage to file a complaint, especially against a person in a significantly more powerful position, it is our duty to take it seriously,” Lynch said. “That means conducting a thorough investigation, gathering facts, and hearing all sides. And that is exactly what happened.”
Lynch added that the employee was so uncomfortable she asked not to be assigned to events where Fenchak would be in attendance.
“In his response, the textbook non-apology, he said he felt bad if someone was off-put or felt uncomfortable,” she said. “The fact that he was not mortified by the impact his actions and words had on her just amazed me. His lack of genuine remorse and unwillingness to take responsibility along with his complete failure to recognize the power dynamic at play is what concerns me.”
Each of the trustees who spoke against Fenchak’s removal said they did not condone his comment, but that it warranted sanctions, not expulsion.
Lubrano and Fenchak both referenced alleged code of conduct violations by other board members who they did not name, including personal insults, defamatory statements and threats of violence against other trustees that they said were ignored by board leadership.
“Why is this behavior – of actual malice and threats regarding fellow trustees – condoned, and yet I am the target for removal?” Fenchak asked.
Lubrano called voting to remove Fenchak “hypocritical and intellectually dishonest.”
“Trustee Fenchak’s informed, direct, though sometimes brash and tenacious approach to some of our university’s most important and hotly contested issues offends you,” Lubrano said. “But his conduct does not rise to the level of a fiduciary breach suggested here today, or justify his removal.”
Brown said Fenchak’s comment to the staffer was “awful” but that removing a trustee is “a slippery slope.”
Paterno, who noted he did not endorse Fenchak’s election to the board and called his comment “offensive,” said removing Fenchak with his term nearly expired and virtually no chance he could be elected again “borders on petty.”
“”This is a sad day for Penn State,” Paterno said. “Anybody that thinks this is a good thing is really not tuned into what’s happening here. We are setting a precedent right now.”
Fenchak did not win reelection this spring after running a write-in campaign when he was barred from appearing on the ballot. In February, he garnered the necessary 50 nominations to be eligible for the ballot as he sought a second three-year term as an alumni trustee. But a new nominating subcommittee with the power to deem candidates “unqualified” and ineligible to be listed on the ballot, created among several bylaw changes last year, voted to disqualify Fenchak.
At the nominating subcommittee’s meeting on Feb. 26, where Fenchak was the only candidate disqualified, trustee Daniel Delligatti cited the incident with the staff member, noting that Fenchak had been advised of seven other “failures to abide by board standards of conduct.”
Fenchak sought an emergency order to be placed on the ballot, arguing that the board had used the nominating subcommittee to circumvent the injunction and that the bylaw changes violated state laws governing nonprofits and freedom of speech.
Penn State countered that the July 2024 incident was part of a “pattern of inappropriate behavior.” Attorneys for the board wrote in a filing that Fenchak has a “bottomless desire for attention” and a “predilection for misogynistic conduct,” citing social media posts that denigrated the board as a whole and specific members.
Marshall ruled in the board’s favor in April.
“Him being on this board is not going to happen future. We all know that but what we want to do today is make sure he can never run again,” Paterno said on Monday. “That sends a very chilling message to future boards and future people…”
Lubrano said he expects Fenchak’s removal will “lead to costly litigation and distract from our important work.”
“Mark my words, your decision to remove Trustee Fenchak will come back to haunt this university,” Lubrano said.
Lynch, though, said trustees have a duty to ensure an incident like the July interaction with the staffer “won’t happen again.”
“This situation was not just locker room talk to her,” Lynch said. “This happened while she was doing her job. We have a responsibility to the penn state community to ensure a safe and respectful environment for all of our employees.”
