COD board members negotiate PR deal without administrators

In an unusual move, two College of DuPage trustees negotiated a $90,000 public relations contract for the school -- then presented it for a vote without including administrators.

College President Sunil Chand was not involved in the six-month deal with Res Publica Group in Chicago because trustees said they'd asked him -- unsuccessfully -- for action.

Chand, though, said he told the board the process was delayed because a new infrastructure system was not in place to support related changes, like a Web site redesign.

Director of the Public Information Bill Troller, though, also said he wasn't consulted and found about the proposed hire 24 hours before Thursday's meeting. The Glen Ellyn school already has a five-person news staff that handles all marketing and publicity.

Of the seven trustees, only Kathy Wessel voted against the measure.

"Why was the president not informed?" she asked.

"I'm not sure what this group is going to do," she continued.

Board Chairman Micheal McKinnon said trustees discussed for the past 18 months a desire for "more PR to go out to our stakeholders."

Wessel, though, said she "can't recall the last time it was discussed."

Trustee David Carlin, who helped fine-tune the agreement, said "one need only to look at the failure of the referendum" in 2001 as evidence for PR consultants.

Actually, the college hired marketing consultants Unicom-Arc of St. Louis during that pitch to voters to conduct focus groups and make sure the board was on the right track.

When the referendum request was rejected, Unicom-Arc recommended the proposal be broken into two parts; voters approved one of those two requests.

"The chief concern to me is our enrollment numbers and financial condition," Carlin said. "If we don't turn that around, this board is going to have to make tough choices."

Wessel said she was opposed to the proposal for three reasons.

"First, the money. I think it's an extremely high amount of money, especially when we have an extremely competent and capable public information staff," she said. "Second, I'm concerned that two board members went off and interviewed this firm and did this without any clear direction from the board or informing other board members.

"Third," she continued, "I think it's wrong the president wasn't involved."

As the board approves contracts, it's permissible for trustees to negotiate them, board attorney Ken Florey said.

The PR group said it will start by evaluating processes to see how information is disseminated and take a close look at the college's Web site. The site is scheduled for a redesign in July when a new data management system is activated.