Chris Clemens, a former provost of UNC who stepped down in the spring, is suing the university and 14 members of its Board of Trustees for allegedly violating North Carolina’s open meeting laws. The lawsuit, filed Monday morning in Orange County Superior Court, accuses the advisory board of “systemically” using closed sessions to discuss matters meant to be completed in open sessions as well as “deliberately communicating about public business” on apps that auto-delete messages. While the pattern of violations dates back to at least Nov. 2023, Clemens and his representation say, the inciting incident for the lawsuit stemmed from a March meeting of the Board of Trustees where policies and practices around tenure were debated in closed session. “Each episode follows the same pattern: the Board invokes a statutory exemption, enters closed session, then discusses broad policy or budget matters that must be debated publicly,” reads the complaint. “The Board compounds these violations by m...