‘Corrupted’: College Replaces Its Pro-Mask President With Wrestling Coach
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A community college board in northern Idaho has been torn asunder after a wrestling coach with no apparent experience in running schools was appointed interim president weeks after its pro-mask mandate president was fired.
The North Idaho College Board of Trustees booted Rick MacLennan during a September meeting, after repeatedly delaying a vote to renew his contract and a weeks-long bitter dispute over whether or not masks should be required on campus to protect the staff and students.
When he announced the mask mandate before the start of classes, MacLennan framed it as “not the least bit desirable” but a necessary effort supported by health guidance that “improves our chances of being able to stay open this fall.”
But just four days into the semester, MacLennan wrote to the community alerting them to a revised policy after the mask requirement was knocked down by the college’s Board of Trustees.
“I am truly hopeful that you, and importantly, our students choose to continue masking despite the lifting of the requirement,” MacLennan wrote in his Aug. 30 letter .
MacLennan’s call for a mandate was swatted down in a 3-2 board vote by Chair Todd Banducci, along with trustees Greg McKenzie and Michael Barnes, who voted in favor of rescinding the mandate. Trustees Ken Howard and Christie Wood voted against it.
In an email to the Daily Beast on Wednesday, Wood described the trustees who rejected the mandate as having “made no secret” of their opposition to face masks.
“We are dealing with a terrible surge of Covid in our region so the President re-implemented the policy for a 2 week period to slow the curve,” she wrote. “These three board members have strong ideology against masks. They have made no secret of that. The three of them are local GOP Precinct Committeemen and that group has been especially vocal and aggressive against the use of masks.”
In a copy of an email to the board obtained by Inside Higher Ed , MacLennan pleaded with board members to reconsider their decision, citing an open letter from medical professionals encouraging the measure, while flagging “increasing COVID-19 positive cases within our college community” driven by the Delta variant.
Weeks later MacLennan, whose contract had been regularly renewed since his appointment in 2016, was terminated by the board. On Monday, the board voted 3-2 to select Michael Sebaaly, who coached wrestling at the college, to serve as interim president until they could conduct a sweeping, nationwide talent search for a new president.
Wood called the two-hour executive session on Monday “a corrupt proceeding that appeared to be a total sham.”
“No qualifications of applicants were considered and no there were no interviews of the applicants by anyone not even our Administration,” she wrote in her email, while declining to comment about Sebaaly directly.
Banducci, McKenzie, and Barnes—the same trio who opposed the mask mandate—supported Sebaaly’s appointment, which was first reported by the Spokesman-Review .
According to an online biography describing his credentials, Sebaaly has a doctorate in educational leadership and spent five years as head wrestling coach at Northwest Kansas Technical College. The qualifications listed on the school’s website don’t detail his leadership experience outside of sports.
Sebaaly did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Wednesday about any other qualifications for the role which boasts a $200,000 prorated salary and oversees an institution of 5,000 enrolled students.
Wood, who opposed Sebaaly’s appointment, said that at least three top candidates were selected by the board’s majority, and no explanation was given as to why others with years of experience were ignored.
“Some of these people are just personal acquaintances with the board chair,” Wood told the Spokesman-Review . “The process has been completely corrupted, and it’s been done so by three trustees who had people in mind for the position. It has nothing to do with qualifications to run a higher education institution. It has to do with personal friendships and (political) ideology.”
Board member Ken Howard, who also opposed Sebaaly’s appointment, had joined Wood to vote in support of including a required five years’ admin experience in higher education roles in the job description, according to the Coeur d’Alene Press . Howard did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.
But according to a copy of the job ad circulating online, alongside a list of preferences, the only formal requirement for the role is a master’s degree from a regionally accredited institution, the Spokesman-Review reported. Sebaaly obtained a master’s degree in history from Buffalo State College.
In the aftermath of his firing, MacLennan filed a legal complaint against the college and the three board members who voted on Monday for his replacement, claiming he had been unlawfully fired.
The path to his departure has extended beyond mask mandates and was further complicated by other internal board politics and questionable conduct, colleagues said.
On Wednesday, Wood told The Daily Beast that the “mask issue no doubt exacerbated their desire to fire him but I believe the real reason stemmed from a personnel complaint the President filed against the board chair.”
In a media release after MacLennan’s firing on Sept. 22, Wood alleged that Banducci had been angling to do away with MacLennan for months after MacLennan made a complaint to the board about “harassment toward students, faculty, staff, administration as well as himself by newly elected Board Chair Todd Banducci.”
It triggered an unsuccessful recall effort against Banducci for behavior Wood described as “abusive and aggressive.”
“I believe this punitive employment action taken against President MacLennan is in direct response to his complaint filed against Trustee Banducci,” Wood wrote in the media release, which touted the “excellent” COVID response during MacLennan’s tenure among other accomplishments.
The board at North Idaho College has been embroiled in an ongoing investigation by its accreditor, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, since March, after it received a formal complaint about Banducci and other board members.
Banducci and a spokesperson for the school did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication on Wednesday.
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Full disclosure, Rick is a personal friend of mine, and I can honestly say that he is one of the most thoughtful, respectful, and well intentioned people I have ever known. And a very funny person to boot. This article is not current, but his position has yet to be filled. I’m posting it as further evidence of the damage being done to US education by the far right extremist movements.
I met with Rick last week and got some further insight into what is happening in his area of North Idaho, which was the birthplace of the original Aryan Nation. Though the Aryan Nation was roundly stomped out of existence as an organization, contemporary right wing extremists have flocked there to reignite its legacy. They are arming themselves to the teeth and aiming to tear down everything they don’t agree with. Mind you, this is a typical community college, not a bastion of liberal ideology, but an arsonist doesn’t much care about about what they are destroying so long as they are responsible for destroying it.
According to Rick, the actual goal of the majority of this Board of Trustees is to destroy the accreditation of the school, thus nullifying the education of anyone currently enrolled there and severing its ties to the community it serves. Rick has huge support from this community, but when the wrong people weasel themselves into the right positions of power, this is what happens. Knowing full well that his contract entitles him to continue to be paid his full salary for 12 months (with full benefits) if terminated without cause, they fired him and replaced win with a wrestling coach who is friendly to their hateful ideologies.
Why do they want to destroy the accreditation? Are they anti-education, too?
more like pro brainwashing...
That was my question to Rick. So they ruin the college and the potential of every student, employee, teacher, etc. there - what then? They just want to destroy education wherever they can get a foothold in it. There is no plan beyond that.
There's something very wrong with people who are anti-education. I don;t think they like people to think for themselves.
I read an article last night where it showed extreme conservatives are still actively trying to take over school board meetings and the school boards themselves.
They said they want to be able to decide what the kids learn...
God help us...
If I have grandchildren I may home school them
Those same morons are the ones saying that CRT is being taught in schools - public schools K-12, WHEN IT'S NOT.
The same ones that are now banning any diversity training...
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I remember a recruitment advertisement for that area not all that long ago that said they had the whitest beaches in the country and "we aren't talking about the sand."
There has been a renewed effort on the far right to tear down and bankrupt all public education and direct all funding to private and for profit school with little to no oversite. It will be protracted and nasty and they will win some battles, but in the end they will not win this war. They are only a somewhat organized minority that can't even get along with each other, let alone try and control a country that for all it's faults still prefers a democracy over the theocratic autocracy these primadonna's wax poetic about. They often tend to self destruct when they break all the rules - good luck to Mr MacLennan.
This community lacks diversity for sure, but Rick has a lot of faith that things will eventually right themselves. How can anyone with half a brain support such an ignorant and empty objective?
They all think they are hero of their own story.
One thing I don't get, if this is a community college, isn't it state or locally ran?
How would there be trustees that can have any oversite of a government institution.
I looked it up to make sure as I really didn't know...Per the wiki:
I imagine that these types of elections don’t typically have high turnouts, and those who do show up are there to push a specific agenda. A lesson on why your vote matters.
All politics are local or something like that
We have a local school board election this year. I have no clue who the candidates are and I don't have children in school so I'm quite removed from the issues at hand. That's not an excuse it just is. I'll have to do my due diligence and research a bit this next week. The election is only a couple of weeks away.
The local paper is behind a paywall so that doesn't help!