SACSCOC removes CC from warning

Clarendon College has been removed from warning by its accrediting body, according to announcements from the school as well as the Southern Association of Colleges & Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC).

“We are happy to have this matter resolved up,” CC President Tex Buckhaults said in a statement. “We work hard to maintain good standing with SACSCOC because they control our accreditation.”

CC was first placed on warning in June of last year after the SACSCOC Board of Trustees determined the college had “failed to demonstrate compliance” with a core requirement and three standards set by the agency relating to governance by the CC Board of Regents following a complaint filed against the board several months earlier.

The warning led to year-long review of Clarendon College by the accrediting body, which culminated in June of this year with a SACSCOC committee visiting CC to determine the college’s compliance with several accreditation standards. The visiting committee interviewed all the members of the board of regents individually, except for Regent Carey Wann who was not a member of the board during the initial SACSCOC investigation last year.

According to information requested from the college by The Clarendon Enterprise, the committee “reviewed extensive documents” and interviewed the board and college president. While the committee found that the college had taken steps to avoid conflict of interest issues with board members, it reported inconsistencies with how the college dealt with conflicts of interest based on responses from members of the board, and it also found the board lacked a “clear operational definition of a conflict of interest for Board members as they apply the policy of the college.”

“During interviews, individual Board members shared inconsistent definitions of conflict of interest and descriptions of how an individual would declare a conflict of interest,” the report said. “The Special Committee examined Board minutes of occasions when Board members recused themselves due to a potential conflict of interest; these lacked consistency based upon individual Board members attempting to determine if he/she should recuse or not.”

The report also found that the college did not have someone – such as a board officer or president – specifically assigned to be responsible for board accountability, did not offer a structured local orientation for new board members to address conflicts of interest, and was not posting all conflict of interest statements on its website as per its policy.

In its response to the findings by SACSCOC, Clarendon College has adopted policy changes to address the issues found by the committee and change the way the board handles conflicts of interest. The board also adopted new policy to provide more structure and monitoring of training for its members.
The college also responded that a Policy Review Special Committee of the board “is working to convert the institution’s policy manual to align with or adopt the TASB Community College Policy Reference Manual.”

“The [Board of Regents] has adopted a new operational definition and a procedure to identify conflict of interest,” the response said. “With these actions the [Board of Regents] and our President have positioned themselves to better protect the integrity of the institution and ensure continued training of its members.”

Following the college’s official response to the SACSCOC committee’s report in August, the SACSCOC Board of Trustees met September 3 to review that response formally removed CC from warning.