When voters go the polls on Nov. 7, they will be asked to vote on constitutional amendment No. 1, which masquerades as a mechanism for "taking politics out of the University of Hawai'i" and creating "a more open, fair and bipartisan process" for selecting members of the Board of Regents.

In reality, the proposed amendment is a scheme to subvert the university's hard-won autonomy and reintroduce legislative micromanagement. Both of the university's accrediting bodies — the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) and the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC accredits the university's four-year campuses) — have written to the university expressing serious concerns about this proposed amendment.

How would the amendment subvert UH autonomy? By taking the power to nominate regents away from the governor, where it has long resided, and replace it with a process in which the state House and Senate will essentially set the selection criteria, pick the people who nominate candidates and require the governor to choose regents only from the list forwarded by the Legislature's handpicked "advisory council." The "governor's nominee" then goes back to the Senate for confirmation. Also under this amendment, the Senate alone will decide if a regent will be reconfirmed for a second term. Never mind whether the governor thinks the regent has done what is best for the university — the governor will have no say in reappointments. Say good-bye to independent thinkers who are prepared to make unpopular decisions for the university's long-term health and well-being.

Anyone considering voting "yes" for this scheme should take a hard look at how well the Legislature has done with the Department of Education and our public schools over the past five decades and ask if this is what they want for the 10-campus UH system, which includes not only the Manoa, Hilo and West O'ahu four-year campuses, but also Hawai'i's seven community colleges.

So what is really going on here? The two major proponents of this scheme, Frank Boas and Sen. Clayton Hee, chairman of the Senate Committee on Higher Education, each has his agendas. Boas spoke at the UH-Manoa commencement in the fall of 2004, and his message was this: Evan Dobelle was the greatest university president Boas has ever seen, and it is the Board of Regents that should go. Hee has publicly stated that he does not fully support autonomy for the university, and his efforts to micromanage it by telling the UH president to hire a specific person at a specific campus are well-documented.

It is no wonder that the accreditors — ACCJC and WASC — have expressed concerns about the amendment's potentially devastating impact on UH. It is no wonder that WASC also took the time to correct misrepresentations Boas has made about the regents' "conflicts of interest" and to express its satisfaction with the way the current Board of Regents is working. It is no wonder that, above all else, the Association of Governing Boards for Colleges and Universities endorses as "best practice" the selection of regents by governors with confirmation by senators — the process Hawai'i has long followed.

Kitty Lagareta is chairwoman of the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents. Reach her at klagareta@commpac.com. She wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.