After an hour-long meeting Thursday morning in the Cornelius A. Martin Regents Room, the Board of Regents chose to reconvene to make its decision to privatize WKU Health Services on July 10 at 9 a.m. 

Despite the decision to reschedule, Graves Gilbert Clinic in Bowling Green is expected to operate WKU Health Services beginning Aug. 1.

President Gary Ransdell said during the meeting that the prospect of operating independently is no longer an option for WKU Health Services.

Faculty Regent Patricia Minter said if better financial decisions were made in the past, WKU Health Services wouldn’t need to be privatized.

“We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if we hadn’t put ourselves in a position that we’ve got to backfill a million point one dollars in the budget,” Minter said. 

The board requested to reconvene in order to clarify any outstanding questions regarding the privatization that need to be answered. The questions will be gathered by Julia McDonald, the staff assistant for the Board of Regents, and sent to a special committee for answering.

Some members also requested certain documents regarding the privatization, such as the request for proposal and the inventory list for WKU Health Services.

Minter applauded the Regents’ decision to carefully review everything related to the privatization. 

“Just approving it in five minutes would have been the easy thing to do today,” Minter said. “We haven’t done the easy thing.”

Ann Mead, vice president for Finance and Administration, declined to comment following the meeting.