A court ruling has blocked the plan, scheduled to phase in starting in 1999, pending a trial on whether trustees adopted the policy at a session that violated open-meeting laws.

The plaintiffs acknowledged that an advisory panel composed entirely of full-time Federal employees would not be covered by the open-meeting law.

The lawsuit contended that the Board of Health had violated open-meeting laws and acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, among other things.

Using New York State's open-meeting law, they sought the right to attend meetings of the internal committee that reviews Stony Brook's animal research proposals.

Many officials, including Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, have criticized provisions exempting Boston University from open-meeting laws.

Priorities include changing the open-meeting laws so that city councils can discuss security measures in secret, and exempting building blueprints from Freedom of Information Act requests.

And Mr. Klein said a formal committee was probably necessary because it might violate the state's open-meeting law for the president to consult privately with too many board members.

However, Sheldon Melnitsky, lawyer for the Department of Housing and Community Renewal, said he would have to determine whether such conversations would violate the open-meeting laws.

The morning after, some critics accused board members of having made up their minds in private sessions and pressed unsuccessfully to have them criminally charged with violating the state's open-meeting law.

But the emergence of open-meeting laws, which prohibit boards or councils from meeting in private, has meant that dirty laundry must be aired in public.