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Roberson and Top-Level Administrators Caught in Personal Use and Wasteful Spending of
State Funds.
A General Call for Valerie Roberson’s Immediate Resignation
The RCC president, Valerie Roberson and her top-level administrators are once again embroiled in a new
controversy. Unchecked by the RCC board of Trustees and too comfortable in their positions, they have
managed to spend a substantial amount of state funds for personal use while wasting an untold amount of the
state money on luxurious gifts, presidential hotel suites for themselves and their non-RCC employee friends,
and expensive meals, to just name a few occurrences.
Early last year, Valerie Roberson decided to do away with the Massachusetts State’s long standing policies
requiring the use of an encumbrance by all state agencies. The encumbrance not only accounts for stateapproved expenditures, but also helps prevent these very types of excesses Roberson and her crew are now
being caught in. Bypassing the state policies, Roberson acquired a credit card for herself, and provided one
to each of her vice-presidents: Cecile Regner, Kevin Hepner and Lorita Williams. This credit card was
intended to allow them to directly purchase any item, unchecked.
Roberson and her vice presidents took advantage of this new-found purchasing power like kids in a candy
store. Some would travel with of their friends to Newport Beach in California staying in presidential suites
and also lodging their friends in other rooms, thanks to the college’s credit card. Others would eat and eat
expensive meals in fancy restaurants as if there is no tomorrow. One did even bill the college over $100 for a
one-time fill-up at a gas station at a time when most people fill up their car tank for $40. Roberson, herself,
recently forced the Roxbury Community College to reimburse her for personal gifts that she had purchased.
These blatant state law violations and possible embezzlement are only the tip of the iceberg. They only
expose a culture of corruption and incompetence that currently exist at RCC. There seems to be no one in
charge as the RCC board of trustees has checked out since the middle of last year. There is simply no oversight
at Roxbury Community College. Case in point: dozens of checks were recently disbursed to RCC students
who were never eligible for financial aid, a number of them are international students. These cases were
uncovered and reported to Roberson and Weiner who chose a cover-up strategy instead of reporting these
occurrences to the state and to the federal government.
The ridiculously high employee turnover at RCC should have long been an indication of Roberson’s inability
to run the college. One board member found “Valerie Roberson’s decisions and actions too erratic: she would
hire a crowd of vice presidents, administrators, and consultants and then fire them all within just a few weeks
for no apparent reasons.” Furthermore, an increasing number of frustrated nursing students have seen a nursing
program which used to be the best and the most structured degree program at RCC going down the drain,
thanks to an incompetent administration on steroids, who made the conscious decision to dismantle this
program.
As stated some time ago by a colleague on this campus, the Valerie Roberson-president-of-RCC experiment
has not worked. In fact, it is a colossal failure. There is a general outcry for Roberson’s immediate resignation
this include the majority of the faculty, staff, students, and community leaders. It is, therefore, time for the
RCC board of trustees to show some respect for the college and for the RCC community and put Roxbury
Community College out of its current nightmare and embarrassment.