University of Colorado President Bruce Benson held a town hall in Denver on Thursday morning, but he didn’t take any questions from the public.

That’s because the public wasn’t invited.

The talk, advertised as a town hall, was “entirely an internal event,” said CU spokesman Ken McConnellogue after Benson addressed university employees at the Trinity Church in downtown Denver.

While the event was livestreamed on Facebook for public viewing, it was advertised primarily to CU administration, and questions from the livestream weren’t taken during the hour-long address, which covered diversity, funding, enrollment and progress being made on all CU campuses.

These internal updates about the university have been called “town halls” for a while, McConnellogue said.

“The ‘town hall’ is just a turn of phrase, more than anything else,” he said. “We used to go around and do them on each campus, but now we’re trying to incorporate technology into them.”

The lack of engagement with questions taken from the Facebook livestream was simply a result of “not being too savvy about Facebook,” McConnellogue said of himself.

At the end of his speech, Benson answered a few questions that staff members submitted beforehand about funding and campus expansion.

McConnellogue recognized that the term “town hall” typically conveys an idea of politicians and officials opening themselves up to the public. He clarified afterward that Benson’s address was more of a “state of the university.”

“I guess we’ve just been too lazy to change the name,” he said.

During the address, Benson touched on issues of diversity, noting that the university had Title IX “under control now.”

He also learned campuses shouldn’t admit international students from only one or two countries because “they all huddle together,” which he said was contrary to promoting diversity. He mentioned the importance of encouraging diversity of thought by incorporating conservative thinking into higher education, too.

Benson alo talked about the low state funding universities are dealing with, adding that Gov. John Hickenlooper has proposed putting $20.5 million toward higher education in the state, with $7.8 million of that going to CU.

“And, frankly, it’s not over yet,” Benson said of the budget process. “I hope we can hold onto that.”

The president praised the innovative ways CU is dealing with low funding, noting the university system is attracting national attention for its cost-saving tactics such as low administrative overhead.

Benson said he would be open to the idea of holding a public town hall in the future, although he didn’t want to commit to saying yes or no at this time because of his busy schedule.

Elizabeth Hernandez: 303-473-1106, hernandeze@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/ehernandez