The head of the Joliet Junior College Board of Trustees on Tuesday backed off his threat to hire a detective to investigate alleged wrongdoing by the school’s president, ending an embarrassing chapter in the history of the country’s oldest community college.
Chairman David Cryer said he changed his mind after college President Thomas Gamble provided canceled checks Monday proving he paid college employees for the work they did around his home. He also gave proof that he paid a rental fee to the college for use of a school floor scrubber.
“I’m not saying I still don’t think there is a possibility of criminal wrongdoing, but there is no record of it and we just don’t have any way of proving it,” Cryer said. “So, for now, we’ll finish up this investigation internally and move on.”
Cryer’s comments put a tenuous end to an incident that had divided the community, fractured the seven-member college board and focused an unwanted and uncomfortable spotlight on the school’s new president.
As the Will County state’s attorney’s office and the Joliet Police Department were pulled into the five-month ordeal, it seemed that the matter was more about politics and personalities than about the estimated $455 Gamble said he paid to four or five school employees.
“This has been an embarrassment to the college and to me as president,” Gamble said Tuesday. “Mr. Cryer was upset that I did not agree with him on some decisions he made and he will extract his ounce of flesh no matter how it embarrasses this college.”
Gamble, who became president in 1995, has been under fire since early this year, when Cryer began investigating rumors that Gamble “coerced” college employees to perform yard and other maintenance work at his Joliet home. Some board members suspected that, in at least one case, the work was performed during the day by an employee who should have been at work, Cryer said.
The fires were stoked in February when Gamble publicly disagreed with the board’s decision to fire three college administrators. Two board members–who had voted to retain the three administrators–sided with Gamble and said the vote was a vendetta against the college president.
In March, Gamble gave board members a memo detailing the work and the payments he had given to college employees. Cryer turned the memo over to the Will County state’s attorney’s office and asked them to investigate.
The state’s attorney’s office refused, saying there was no basis for a criminal investigation. Cryer then turned the memo over to the Joliet Police Department, which also refused to investigate.
Finally, during an executive session of the college board last month, Cryer suggested hiring a private detective. Two board members stormed out of the meeting, and, because one board member already was absent, Cryer did not have a quorum and had to end the meeting–leaving the detective matter up in the air, Cryer said.
Since the outset, Gamble has maintained his innocence. He said he hired the college employees to work on their off hours because he wanted to help them “earn some extra cash.” And he said he never coerced anyone.
On Monday, during a meeting of the executive board of trustees, he handed over the canceled checks and sworn statements from the college employees.
“I have done nothing inappropriate,” Gamble said. “This whole thing is absurd.”
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