The 1962 movie Cape Fear is a classic in psychological terror (and the 1991 remake equally so). Although the movies weren’t specifically set in North Carolina’s Cape Fear River, we do have an educational institution, Cape Fear Community College (CFCC), where bad administration has occasioned some low-level unease.
In today’s Martin Center article, Anthony Hennen explains the situation at CFCC. He writes:
Faculty and staff have accused CFCC president Jim Morton of creating a hostile work environment built on favoritism and bullying. The “toxic culture,” as multiple sources put it, has made employees afraid to criticize leadership for fear of retaliation.
No, we don’t have the makings of a movie plot. Instead, what we have a case of abuse of power.
Hennen quotes a former administrator who insisted on anonymity:
It’s, in my opinion, it’s a larger problem. It’s something that the community college system itself needs to find a way to address so that local employees have a place to go when they don’t feel like they can trust their own HR department, their own president, their own board of trustees.
The root of the problem seems to be that the Board of Trustees, rather than exerting independent oversight of the president, is in league with him.
Hennen argues that changes in state law are needed to prevent abuses like this, where a concentration of local power leads to cronyism and abuse. If government is going to be in the education business, at least make sure that colleges aren’t run for the benefit of the administrators.