Let’s get the full disclosure out of the way right off the top.
I once worked on a freelance basis for Ellen Robertson Green, the newly former head of communications and marketing at Amarillo College. I wrote a blog for Panhandle PBS, the AC-affiliated public television station. I consider her a friend.
There. That’s out of the way.
The news today that Green has resigned her position at AC — effective immediately — because of hiring violations is disturbing to me in the extreme.
She quit and her daughter was fired from the college. Green’s daughter had worked as a content producer for Panhandle PBS’s website and, thus, reported directly to her mother — in violation of the school’s anti-nepotism policy.
Here’s what troubles me: How did Green actually make that hire without her superiors not knowing about it? She didn’t run the college. She didn’t operate in a vacuum. Moreover, the college hires legal counsel to protect the institution from getting entangled in precisely these kinds of issues.
Here’s the policy. It looks quite clear to me.
https://www.actx.edu/president/pagesmith/80
Green is a high-profile individual in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle. She served on the Amarillo City Council until this past May, when she was defeated for re-election. I considered her to be a highly effective elected official and I wanted her to keep her council seat.
How this matter got past the individuals who are in charge at Amarillo College escapes me.
