Despite the boos of a sometimes-raucous crowd, the trustees of the College of DuPage reaffirmed on Wednesday a controversial $763,000 severance deal for the two-year institution’s president, Robert Breuder, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The Illinois college’s Board of Trustees first approved the buyout agreement last week, but it scheduled a special meeting this week to deal with concerns over a procedural error in the earlier vote. The board was not there to reconsider the buyout, the college’s lawyer, Kenneth Florey, said at the start of Wednesday’s meeting. Instead, it was “taking the high road and voting again.”
The unusual do-over vote, required because of a “procedural” error, comes six days after the board approved a $763,000 severance deal for President Robert Breuder, which sparked widespread criticism over the amount of the agreement and a lack of transparency at the publicly funded community college in Glen Ellyn.
That outrage continued Wednesday night as a standing-room-only, sometimes raucous crowd filled a larger meeting space, which a judge ordered the board to use. About 400 people, some of them standing on an overflow balcony, listened as students, faculty, residents and two state lawmakers asked the board to reconsider the severance agreement and the effect it was having on the college’s reputation. Many asked the board members to resign.
The board, however, decided to approve the deal. Trustee Kim Savage defended it, saying the remainder of Breuder’s contract, which goes until 2019, would have paid him $2-million. Instead, he will retire in May 2016.
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