I would think that this would be a strategy by school presidents to eliminate the occasional annoying intervening actions of the BoT, and to functionally consolidate power. ND has 49 BoT's aside from Fr Jenkins, some with a focus on other parts of the world. How on earth could enough of them get organized to bring pressure onto Jenkins and Swarbrick? It would be like herding cats which I suspect was exactly the thinking when they started asking so many to be BoT's.
This fact is screwing us right now.
Link: https://www.nd.edu/about/leadership/board-of-trustees/
Father Ted arranged many years ago for certain legal/ power reasons