Dec. 20--For the past year, Gloria Roark has told her classmates at the College of DuPage not to worry.
Yes, the school has been plagued by a series of scandals that led to the president's firing. Yes, the board of trustees often bickers like children. And, yes, the school is under federal investigation.
But Roark -- the student representative on the college's board of trustees -- felt certain the school would overcome its difficulties. That optimism faded this past week, when the state's largest community college was placed on probation by its accrediting agency and the elected trustees' infighting brought college business to a standstill when half of them failed to show up for a meeting.
"I've been telling people everything would be OK," said Roark, a biology major from Aurora. "I can't say that anymore. I'm worried and I don't know how it's going to be fixed."
The college's yearlong crisis deepened last week, following the extremely rare sanction from the Higher Learning Commission, which found serious concerns with the school's integrity and governance. Though it sounds innocuous, probation is the toughest punishment the agency can levy at this point and it carries an ugly stigma in the world of higher education.
It's particularly painful at the Glen Ellyn-based campus, which had been widely regarded as one of the country's top community colleges. While students will continue receiving academic credit and those credits likely will transfer to other schools, students have been encouraged to check with the other institutions.
The accreditation agency did not cite any flaws with the college's educational standards or degree programs. But that has been little consolation to faculty members, who have publicly chastised the school's senior administrators for missteps they say will unfairly tarnish the school's academic reputation.
