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Four members of the Bethune-Cookman University Board of Trustees resigned last week following a Tuesday letter from Robert Delancy, president of the Bethune-Cookman national alumni association, that faulted the board for being unable to protect the school's finances and called for members' resignation, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.
Joe Petrock, Rafael A. Ramirez Jr., Michael D. Walsh and Nancy Lohman stepped down, and more resignations are expected to follow. Before the board met Thursday, a crowd of students, faculty and staff gathered to support interim president Hubert Grimes after word got around that the board was planning to fire him.
Petrock told the News-Journal that he was tired of being blamed for Bethune-Cookman's financial problems, particularly for issues with planned new residence halls that the university cannot afford.
“I wasn’t the chairman when the housing project was presented and I wasn’t on the executive committee,” Petrock said to the News-Journal. “I was just a member of the board. We weren’t given all the information.”
At a previous board meeting, staff were told that some faculty salaries would be reduced and there would be staff furloughs. Several employees addressed the board at Thursday's meeting and said that some faculty no longer had confidence in the board and that they were concerned about the university's future.
