When the University of Maryland announced that it was petitioning to join the Big Ten conference late last year, it was news to many—mostly because the university’s Board of Regents violated the state’s Open Meetings Law.

That was the conclusion reached by the Open Meetings Compliance Board this week, reports the Post. According to a report by the state board, the regents’ private meetings plainly violated requirements that notice be given and that the public be allowed to attend:

“The Board [of Regents] itself has an affirmative duty to comply with the Act,” the compliance board wrote. “Accordingly, we find that the Board of Regents violated the Open Meetings Act by failing to give public notice of its November 18 and 19, 2012, Special Meetings and by failing to follow the Act’s mandatory procedures for closing an open meeting.

“We also find, even on the basis of the limited information that the Board has provided to us about those meetings, that at least some of the Board’s discussion should almost certainly have been conducted in open session. Lastly, we find that the summaries of the two closed sessions posted on the Board of Regents’ website are deficient in that both fail to name all persons present at those meetings as required by the Act.”

The university defended itself by saying that emergency circumstances required the hastily called and private meetings, but later said that it had revised its own procedures to ensure that such violations wouldn’t occur again.