Board could have followed different path in contract extension

At Wednesday’s board meeting, the MHCC District Board of Education approved Interim President Michael Hay’s extension of term to two years.
While this may not sound unusually controversial, this was approved via the consent agenda in the board meeting. Therefore the board, without discussion, approved it.

In simpler terms, the board approved Hay to be the interim college president for another year without any public input or announcement.
When the board decides to keep such an impactful decision to the college like this, almost completely hidden from the public eye, it is neither ethical nor fair to the paying students and staff of MHCC.

It’s an insult to students and staff alike.

The board may argue that Hay is simply serving as a temporary interim, so such an extension is not of any significance. But what they fail to realize is that many of the students that come to MHCC are not in it for the long haul. For many, Hay is the only MHCC president they will know, interim or not.
How would U.S. citizens react if after President Obama’s term ends, before a new president is even elected, a new interim president is secretly placed into power with basically no public hearing whatsoever?

While this is obviously an exaggeration, it does highlight the amount of publicity such an action should have warranted. Placing someone into a position of power that no one, besides the six board members, has had a say in, is rather a leap of faith on the board’s part.

The first stirrings of this move were at the September board retreat, where all of the board members minus Bob Coen agreed to extend Hay’s contract for another year. It was at the October meeting that the board talked about the extension with those in attendance at the meeting. When the Jan. 11 meeting came around, the words “contract extension” were not even uttered once.
The problem here is that most people at MHCC, students and staff alike, don’t attend board meetings. So, part of the burden to educate remains on their shoulders. However, the board also ought to have made more of an effort to publicize this move.

As happy as we at The Advocate are to provide knowledge as a public service to our fellow students, it is troubling that we are having to write such an editorial, revealing to our fellow students who their president will be for well over a year, when it should be common knowledge to all.

Students are the lifeblood of MHCC, and like any other college or university, our dollars are what keeps this school’s gears running.

Should we not have the right to know when something of this magnitude happens?

What we hope, is that next time the board is responsible for making such an important decision that they will first hear the opinion of those impacted by it.

Talking about it once in privacy and once in public is hardly the notice they should have given the student body and faculty about the specifics of this contract extension.

At the very least the action should have been given its own item on the agenda rather than tucked away in the consent agenda, which is passed through in the first unnoticed minutes of a board meeting.