Imagine a community college with a dysfunctional board of trustees hurting its relationship with its own faculty, its students, its community and the elected officials who provide it with millions of dollars in funding.

Broome Community College in the Binghamton area is facing such a crisis:

• Seventeen months without a campus president, despite $43,000 spent on the search; 
• Fifteen months without a faculty contract; 
• A nearly $1 million state aid cut; 
• Students proposing a strike to oppose the trustees and support the faculty; and
• A county legislature that has publicly expressed its displeasure with the board's lack of performance.

The principal voice trying to get the college back on track is the 200-member Broome Community College Association.

After surveying the damage done by the current trustee board, and deliberating internally on the tough decision, the faculty has taken a vote of "no confidence" in the trustees.

Members of the local union voted 177-to-4 to ask the board members to step down.

"Academic quality and campus morale are hurt when you have a board that doesn't advocate for the college," said the local's president, Greta Wingate. Because of the board's dismal record, "We wanted to act as a catalyst for change," she continued.

The process was careful and deliberate. The union's resulting "no confidence" resolution included grave concerns about the trustees' mishandling of finances, the campus presidential search and relations with college employee unions.

The spirit of unity the faculty have built will be needed in coming months as they take on challenges ranging from the lack of a contract, to a board of trustees that needs to go.

"We are determined to do what's right for the college and our students," Wingate said.