Meetings of the University of Missouri Board of Curators -- though in part open to the public -- typically have no members of the public in the audience. At this week's meeting, however, about 30 backers of the University of Missouri Press, which the university is eliminating, attended, hoping for a chance to speak. The Columbia Daily Tribune reported that the board gave them no chance to do so. At the end of the public agenda of the meeting, a time other boards take public comment, some board members went into a closed-door meetings while others went to a press conference on athletics, the newspaper reported.