College District Fires Back at Panel

With its accreditation in jeopardy, the South Orange County Community College District has taken the unprecedented step of challenging a panel that holds the district’s future in its hands.

District Chancellor Cedric A. Sampson, in an appeal lodged with the federal Department of Education, criticized a Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges accreditation panel’s decision earlier this year to place Irvine Valley and Saddleback colleges on “warning” status.

The two colleges that make up the college district remain fully accredited but are subject to repeat inspections and expectations of improvement. A 19-member accreditation panel is scheduled to reconsider the colleges’ status in mid-January.

In a Wednesday news conference, Sampson said the complaint was based in part on suspicions that the head of the panel that reviewed the district had a conflict of interest. Sampson and district board President Dorothy Fortune also criticized the accreditation agency for inserting itself into the bitter, long-standing battle between faculty and the elected Board of Trustees.

“We think the rules are there, but people apparently failed to follow them,” Sampson said after releasing a copy of the district’s Oct. 22 complaint letter. “We think the commission should have policed itself.”

Without addressing the complaint in detail, Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges Executive Director David B. Wolf said the accrediting organization is preparing a response, due Jan. 10, for the education department. He said he believes the complaint is the first of its kind in the panel’s nearly four-decade history.

“We are responding to the allegations that were made by the district though the appropriate channels and are confident that, after this review, our [actions] will be upheld,” Wolf said.

Stephanie Babyak, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education, said that this was the first appeal filed by a community college district; she did not know if individual community colleges had previously taken the same step.

Irvine Valley and Saddleback were granted renewed accreditation in February despite a blistering critique by Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges panel, which blamed the district’s elected leaders for meddling in college affairs. The panel then described the district as “wracked by malfunction,” although officials say they have since noticed some signs of progress.

Loss of accreditation can result in a school’s inability to secure some federal grants and offer federal financial aid to students. It can also hinder students’ ability to transfer credits to another school.

While the two colleges boast strong academic programs and enviable transfer rates to four-year institutions, they have been plagued by faculty discontent. A recent survey at Irvine Valley found widespread criticism of the administration and pervasive fear that speaking out could lead to retaliation.

Some professors and an elected trustee on Wednesday worried that the complaint would only inflame matters prior to the January accreditation meeting. The accreditation panel runs the risk of appearing to bow to the district’s wrath if it lifts the warning status or appearing retaliatory if it doesn’t.

Trustee Marcia Milchiker called the letter mean-spirited.

“I don’t understand the motive of attacking the commission that’s accrediting us,” she said. “It’s like going out and attacking a teacher who’s about to give you a grade. I’m wondering about the wisdom of this attack.”

Irvine Valley French professor Jody Hoy suggested that board time would be better spent remedying campus problems than complaining about the evaluation process.

“I think this is a board majority which perceives constructive criticism as an attack,” she said. “I think this is a desperate attempt to deflect attention from what’s really going on in the district.”

In leveling the complaint, district officials specifically point to the role of San Diego Mesa College President Constance Carroll as chairwoman of the accrediting panel that imposed warning status. Carroll, who was president of Saddleback College for 10 years ending in 1993, should have recused herself, district officials said.

Panel rules bar commissioners from making decisions about schools that employed them within the last five years. However, Carroll said she did not have a conflict of interest because that period had elapsed and she did not maintain relationships at Saddleback other than “good, collegial” ones.

“Conflict of interest is not something to be devised and made up by anyone who is disappointed in an outcome,” she said. “I will emphatically state that I have always abided by the commission’s conflict-of-interest policy and never acted contrary to it.”

The district complaint also contends the accreditation panel applied “arbitrary standards” by criticizing the political climate at the campuses.

In one report, the panel urged college groups to heal rifts of “hostility, mistrust, cynicism and despair.” Sampson and Fortune contend that such a recommendation “cannot be justified based on the published [panel] standards.”

However, Carroll said panel standards cover everything from finances to campus climate.