Vermont's fourth largest credit union, the $346 million Vermont Federal Credit Union, may be charting new ground in dealing with the Occupy movement. It now has a Burlington activist on its board.

The election on June 7 of Eric Davis, a research assistant in ecological economics at the University of Vermont, has roiled the Vermont industry and put the governance process under the microscope.

His election capped off a tense month of public dialogue in the Burlington media, both print and online, about the credit union role in the community as well as the democratic process in how a cooperative selects its directors.