College of DuPage is not going rogue

Last week, the village of Glen Ellyn sent a city inspector to threaten College of DuPage contractors with citations if they continued to erect new electronic signs. This was unfortunate, as we need these signs to communicate with the more than 30,000 students on our campus every semester.

On Friday, COD filed suit against the village to prevent this from happening again; our signs are crucial to maintaining safety for our students and that state statute grants the college authority over its own improvements. The court said that we had a compelling argument but did not see an emergency need to immediately restrain the village.

Within hours, we saw a life-threatening storm wreak havoc throughout the Chicago area, with 80 mile-per-hour winds and power outages. This is precisely the kind of crisis in which our electronic signs are critical for communicating instructions to our students. Instead, the signs remained dark. Fortunately, we had a minimal number of people on campus, and no one was hurt.

Do not believe the village's characterization of COD as a rogue entity simply building whatever we want and how we want it. The vast majority of what the village asks of COD we do, not because we have to but because we want to maintain a spirit of cooperation. This cooperative relationship has not been a two-way street. The village's recent strong arm tactics have been retribution for the college exiting from an intergovernmental agreement in 2008.

Where we disagree is whether the village can regulate our parking or our signage. The aging electronic signs being replaced are not in the village's right of way, and the village has no jurisdiction over them.

Please know your community college strives every day to serve you. We have no intention of stopping our efforts to keep our campus safe and attractive.

Robert L. Breuder

President, College of DuPage