by P.D. Lesko

When asked what WCC President Rose Bellanaca does well, Ruth Hatcher shot back: “I don’t know what she does. She’s got eight vice presidents.”

IF RUTH HATCHER has her work cut out for her, she doesn’t seem as though she’s worried about it. A former teacher, administrator and union leader, Hatcher knows the nooks and crannies of Washtenaw Community College.

“When I retired I thought I would run for the Board,” said Hatcher. “The faculty there are some of the best teachers in the state. I care about the college. Me running is payback.”

Hatcher, 67, has a sense of humor as dry and lovely as Chianti. She smirks as often as she smiles and is earnest in her answers to questions about the Washtenaw Community College Board of Trustees.

“I just can’t imagine what’s going on with the Board,” she says, shaking her head. “I can tell you one thing. There needs to be a teacher on the Board.”

When asked why, Hatcher leans forward and raises her eyebrows. “Because there’s no place for faculty in Bellanca’s Strategic Plan.”

Bellanca is Dr. Rose Bellanca, the embattled president of the two-year college. Six months ago, Dr. Bellanca’s faculty hit her with a vote of no confidence and sent a letter to the college’s accrediting agency alleging violations of accrediting standards.

Ruth Hatcher remembers better times. In fact, she says her “institutional memory” will play an important role in her job as a trustee.

“WCC has eight VPs, but not many more students than when Bellanca came (2011). She’s playing with people.”

Hatcher’s allegations are corroborated by three administrators who work there. The staffers provided documents that show numerous staffers have retired and others have been transferred into jobs they subsequently quickly left.

It’s just this kind of leadership on the part of Dr. Bellanca into which Ruth Hatcher intends to dig deeper.

“I intend to walk around and talk to people,” says Hatcher.

At St. Clair Community College, when Rose Bellanca was president there, a trustee found himself under a defacto gag order imposed on him by his fellow trustees. The man was banned from talking about Board business outside of Board of Trustee meetings. The trustee alleged the gag order was the result of his pointed questions about Dr. Bellanca’s spending and leadership.

“I have no intention of trashing Washtenaw,” says Hatcher, when discussing the St. Clair Community College issues. “I intend to ask questions privately. But if I don’t get answers to my questions, I’ll ask the questions in public.”

Some of the questions she wants to ask are pointed, such as why the two-year college’s president needs eight vice presidents. Other questions have to do with why the college’s trustees keep extending Dr. Bellanca’s contract and hiking her pay. Rose Bellanca is the fifth highest paid community college president in the state.

“The Board is not making a good case for why she (Bellanca) is doing a good job,” said Hatcher. “The college’s transparency and communication could be a lot better. There’s got to be transparency about the money. It’s one of the highest priority items.”

Dr. Bellanca has been sharply criticized in the media for what critics describe as profligate spending.

Most recently, The Ann Arbor Independent revealed that Dr. Bellanca has used her college-issued credit card to pay for a $1,146 “celebration” for Trustee Diana McKnight-Morton. The event included a birthday cake, wine, lemonade, fig glazed sea scallops and lamb chops. Several of the candidates running for the Board of Trustees criticized the event. Christina Fleming, a student who captured the second-highest number of votes after Ruth Hatcher, commented in response to the expenditure. She said the amount spent by President Bellanca on the party could have paid the tuition for a student.

When asked if Hatcher would have the fortitude to vote to fire the college’s president, if necessary, she answered without hesitation: “We could persuade her, train her. Then again, I don’t know if she’s trainable. I do believe she is damaging the reputation of the college. If the accrediting agency comes, that would be a disaster.”

In June, faculty sent a letter to the college’s accrediting agency. The faculty, like Ruth Hatcher, are upset that Dr. Bellanca has hired multiple vice presidents. This is from the letter to the accrediting agency:

“Whereas, in the three years of President Bellanca’s tenure, the College has gone from having two full vice presidents and four associate vice presidents to having seven full vice presidents and is now in the process of hiring a new associate vice president, even as budgets for areas across the college are being cut, most disconcertingly positions that support students and instruction are being eliminated or are left unfilled, as evidenced by the reduction in counselors and in college lab support staff.”

Hatcher believes that trustees need to be meeting with faculty instead of just “saying they like Rose.”

The bottom line is, Ruth Hatcher believes, “that WCC is being run more like a business and less like an educational institution. WCC is a service, not a business.”