Editor’s note: This story is part of a series on the role of corporate influences in Syracuse University’s governance and campus politics, based on dozens of interviews with faculty, staff, students, university leadership, higher education experts and other outside experts.

Eric Spina was leaving out a key piece of information as he addressed the Syracuse University faculty and staff gathered in Hendricks Chapel.

It was November 2013, and Spina, then SU’s provost and interim chancellor, was leading a forum about a university-wide assessment being administered in partnership with consulting firm Bain & Company.

The assessment, Spina said, would culminate in a report containing “a set of facts and a deep knowledge base” that would be presented to Chancellor-designate Kent Syverud, serving as a crucial foundation to guide his decisions. Data was to be collected through budgetary analysis, interviews with campus leaders and surveys of faculty and staff.

Further input would be provided from the assessment’s steering committee, which was a mix of faculty and administrators. Spina emphasized that the steering committee would play a leading role in the assessment.

“It’s not really the Bain project,” he said. “That’s a clear message I want you to hear. This is the Syracuse University project that is being run by the steering committee.”

What Spina didn’t mention was that there was another committee involved: the assessment’s executive committee, which was privy to more information than the steering committee and had authority over it. The executive committee consisted of Spina, four other upper-administrators, SU trustee John Riley and, notably, trustee Steven Barnes.

Barnes is an executive at Bain Capital, the investment firm with close historical ties to Bain & Company. Bain Capital’s founders were a group of partners from Bain & Company. Although Bain Capital and Bain & Company are separate entities, some faculty said they perceive the intersection of the two at SU as a possible conflict because of their historical similarities.

Serving on the assessment’s executive committee was an early sign of the influence Barnes would have in guiding SU’s institutional planning under Syverud. A long-time donor to SU and a voting trustee since 2008, he was named chairman in 2015, making him the university’s highest-ranking individual authority. It gives him the responsibility of leading SU’s central governing body that has ultimate rule over the university.

On Wednesday evening, Barnes sat in a first row pew inside Hendricks Chapel as SU community members — including Barnes — participated in a discussion about discrimination on campus in light of the Theta Tau videos.

Steven Barnes, chair of SU’s Board of Trustees, speaks inside Hendricks Chapel during a discussion Wednesday. Alexandra Moreo | Senior Staff Photographer

It was a rare public appearance for Barnes, who has operated mostly in quiet as chair. Last week, he penned a message to the campus community saying he was “appalled” by the behavior in the Theta Tau videos. That was the first time he has personally addressed the full campus community as chairman, according to SU News archives.

Even as Barnes has functioned in a space unseen by some, he has left a lasting mark on the university, where policies and initiatives in recent years have closely resembled common Bain managerial approaches.

A Babies R Us in Syracuse is one of the stores that will close as a result of Toys R Us going out of business. Kai Nguyen | Photo Editor

Bain’s strategies are common in private equity, but experts said Bain is sometimes particularly aggressive. A 2012 Wall Street Journal analysis found that, of 77 businesses Bain invested in from 1984 until early 1999, 22 percent either filed for bankruptcy or went out of business within eight years.

Since its origin, Bain’s purpose has been to use companies as engines of profit for its investors. Mitt Romney and other partners from Bain & Company left the consulting firm in 1984 to create Bain Capital. In 1985, Romney said the firm would look to take over companies and, after five to eight years, harvest them at a significant profit.

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Bain & Company’s final report assessing SU, published in April 2014, signaled that major change was coming to the university. The report found that the majority of faculty and staff believed SU needed “to change significantly” within five years.

Barnes is closely affiliated with Vice Chancellor Haynie, who has played a leading role in developing and implementing the Academic Strategic Plan.

A state-of-the-art recreation complex, named after Barnes in honor of his $5 million gift to the project, will open in 2019. Madeline Foreman | Staff Photographer

Syverud has acknowledged that the genesis for the buyout was the Bain report, which indicated SU’s operating expenses were outpacing its revenues, and that a primary driver of that trend was staff salary expenses.