The board of Howard Community College is pushing back against efforts to remove President Daria J. Willis, accusing some critics on an anonymous online message board of “racist, vitriolic, and regrettable forms of online bullying.”

Board members emailed the campus community Wednesday night, the same night that trustees met for more than 90 minutes in closed session to discuss personnel matters.

“The Board of Trustees is aware of a website that has published alleged grievances against President Daria Willis,” the board wrote in its email to the campus community, which also appeared on the anonymous message board. “We denounce this and any other efforts to defame Dr. Willis, who, with her senior leadership team, successfully carries out the board’s vision of supporting students and our surrounding communities.”

The anonymous online message board includes more than 70 comments, most of which focus on the more than 2 ½-year tenure of Willis, the college’s first Black president. While most of the posts take aim at Willis’ leadership style and do not explicitly criticize her based on her race or gender, some complain about what they call “racist hiring” or an environment that “is toxic and has become racist.” Some went so far as to call Willis racist.

While Willis has vowed that she is “not going anywhere,” the same cannot be said for some HCC trustees.

On Friday, the community college announced the departures of three board members. Former vice chair M. Shafeeq Ahmed ended his board tenure on Aug. 15, the news release states, while Chair Sean Keller and former Chair Christopher Marasco “will depart the board immediately.”

It was unclear if the departures were related to the controversy.

Jarrett Carter, HCC’s vice president of external affairs, communications and advancement, said in an email Friday afternoon that the three “did not provide a reason for their departures,” but added that Keller and Marasco resigned after endorsing the statement expressing “unanimous and continuing confidence” in Willis.

Gov. Wes Moore will appoint three people to replace the three departed members on the seven-member board.

Willis, 39, took the helm of the college in January 2022, becoming its fifth president, according to her online biography. She had previously led a community college in Washington state and held various other college leadership positions in New York state and Texas.

“As the next president, I commit to empowering the college and the Howard County community, inspiring innovation, closing the achievement gap among students, and advocating for social justice, equity, and education for all,” Willis said in a statement upon her appointment.

HCC serves more than 13,000 students taking classes for credit and employs more than 2,500 people.

The online anonymous message board sprung up in July 2022, six months into Willis’s tenure, using the URL www.howardcc.fyi and asking, “what are people saying about hcc?”

Commenters, many of whom identified themselves only as HCC employees, complained about what they said was low morale and a toxic environment. One claimed there had been “unprecedented turnover and employee departures” since the president’s arrival.

“This site is for those who have been abused and silenced by the current administration at Howard Community College. Anonymous comments have been submitted here and also gathered from various sites on the internet and placed here for public review,” the message board states.

The first post, from an unnamed employee on July 9, 2022, alleges: “The college is in a death spiral. Change is welcome but there is no rhyme or reason to current changes; no metrics to measure results and no recognition from the President of the skills and potential contributions of talented college staff/faculty.”

The next message board post wouldn’t come for almost another year, on May 16, 2023. Someone identifying themselves as an HCC employee wrote, “The joy of working here has been completely absorbed by the autocratic reign of one Daria Willis.”

Willis could not be reached for comment Friday.

But Carter said, “It’s one thing to make anonymous posts, and certainly anybody who is contributing, we respect their right to free speech. But how can we resolve anything if we don’t hear from a person affiliated with the institution saying this is what we would like to see changed?”

Others say that the president resisted faculty attempts to unionize.

“Howard Community College faculty have created an award-winning community institution in Columbia, Md., yet are under constant threat of dismissal and are continually disrespected by administrators,” the new union, AFT Maryland, wrote in an August 2023 news release. “Longtime educators, who once relished working at HCC, feel their dedication is being used against them and are told by their supervisors that if they are unhappy ‘there are plenty of exit signs.’”

Carter said the HCC administration holds no animosity toward the full-time faculty’s union or the more recently formed adjunct faculty union. When the union had its certified paperwork, Carter said, a smaller group came to the president’s office but the office was closed.

Philip Vilardo, a full-time faculty union member who teaches sociology, said that efforts to unionize started before Willis became president, but he added that “the current president has been generating a lot of support for the unionization efforts among faculty.”

The HCC board was scheduled to hold a special meeting and closed session on Sept. 3, but it was abruptly canceled that morning.

Three days later, Willis and Carter took to X and LinkedIn to denounce the posts on the anonymous message board. Carter called it “a website with anonymous comments leveling racist, sexist lies against our board of trustees and our president.”

“Having had the chance to work with this board, this president, and community for a year, I know Dragon Country doesn’t take any mess,” Carter wrote in posts on both X and LinkedIn.

Willis shared both of Carter’s posts on those same social media platforms. “I’m not going anywhere. Dragon Country is my home. @HowardCC,” she wrote on X.

The dragon is the community college’s official mascot.

The Board of Trustees unanimously appointed Willis as HCC’s new leader a month after Kathleen Hetherington, who had served as president for 14 years, retired in October 2021.

“The trustees were impressed with Dr. Willis’s energy and accomplishments, her commitment to students and their education, and her steadfast focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion in her work,” Marasco, the then-chair of the trustees, said at the time of Willis’ appointment.

Before coming to HCC, Willis served as president of Everett Community College in Everett, Washington from 2019 to 2021.

Prior to that, Willis was the provost and senior vice president of academic affairs at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, New York for about three years, according to her LinkedIn profile. She also held various leadership positions at colleges in the Houston area.