A controversy over who should lead a Florida community college has erupted because a white educator rejected a job offer after two school officials told him he lacked support among Blacks.
The brouhaha at Florida Community College of Jacksonville has split the board of trustees, bruised the college’s public image and brought scrutiny from special interest groups and the governor. At least two angered trustees have called on state officials, including Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles’s legal staff, to investigate comments made to Dr. Donald Cameron.
Cameron, the president of Guilford Technical Community College in Jamestown, N.C., had been offered the presidency of the 92,000-student Florida community college. The fifty-three-year-old college administrator, who is white, says he spent three days in Jacksonville meeting with community leaders, business people and trustees after the offer. During a meeting with John Wiggins, chairman of the college’s trustees, Cameron said he was told that his selection had raised concerns in the Black community. Wiggins is Black, as are two others who attended the meeting at the Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church — college lobbyist C. Ronald Belton and Abyssinia’s pastor, the Rev. Tom Diamond.
The back-and-forth over who will be the college’s next president illuminates longstanding infighting among the board of trustees’ members, says former president Dr. Charles Spence, who left Florida nine months ago to become chancellor of California’s Contra Costa Community College District. Calling the disagreement “destructive,” Spence said, “It’s a shame to watch this happen. What’s unusual about this is that once a board selects a candidate, usually everyone gets behind the winner to make it work.”
