Masser withstands challenge from Lubrano, holds onto Penn State trustee chairmanship

Penn State’s board of trustees will not see change at the top, but it did see a challenge on Friday.

Keith Masser was re-elected as chairman at the trustees meeting at Penn State Beaver, but the vote wasn’t unanimous.

That, in and of itself, is not unusual. Division on the board between alumni-elected trustees on one side and everyone else on the other has become a familiar constant.

But Friday’s election was very much a showdown between old guard and new blood, with frequent alumni ringleader Anthony Lubrano also scoring a nomination.

The ballots were secret. Once they were tallied, Masser’s 25 votes retained his chairmanship for a third term. Lubrano took 10 votes. Likewise, when the vice-chairmanship votes were counted, Ira Lubert won with 24 votes, ahead of Alice Pope’s 11.

The votes seldom show movement beyond the firmly drawn battle lines. However, in Friday’s election, at least one person who wasn’t an alumni-elected trustee voted for Lubrano, and two of them for Pope.

There was a unanimous vote for three at-large members to join the executive committee. Lubrano, fellow alumni-elected trustee Barbara Doran and agricultural-elected trustee Donald Cotner will join that top decision-making group.

Lubrano said he was disappointed to not win the chairmanship, but happy to join the executive committee.

The July meeting was the first of the new term, with a handful of new members of the board, like student trustee Luke Metaxas, faculty trustee David Han, business and industry leaders Robert Fenza and Mary Lee Schneider, agricultural representative Chris Hoffman and alumni member Robert Tribeck.

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Masser withstands challenge from Lubrano, holds onto Penn State trustee chairmanship."