Students and faculty are protesting against Coe College for the institution’s treatment of a prominent Black trustee who recently resigned. 

Darryl Banks, an alumnus from 1972, has served on the college’s Board of Trustees for four decades according to a report from local ABC affiliate KCRG. Banks’ resignation followed a contentious interaction with another trustee during a meeting where the board voted in a new president for Coe, David Hayes, a white man who served as the interim president since the beginning of the year. 

Hayes would be the 16^th president of the liberal arts college located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 

Banks wrote in his resignation letter, obtained by KCRG, that during an intense board meeting he raised his concerns about how the board’s presidential search process lacked “diversity and inclusion” on behalf of the trustees of color. 

Banks was called a “baldfaced liar” by a trustee member in response. 

Coe’s Student Senate released a statement in support of Banks and expressed frustration with the college’s “slow and incremental change” in its message. 

“The board’s failure to recognize the racial and systemic nature of the incident with Darryl Banks proves that board leadership does not value or understand diversity, equity, and inclusion to the fullest extent necessary,” the message stated, as reported by The Gazette. 

Coe Board of Trustees chair, Carson Veach, issued an apology for how the board handled the meeting according to The Gazette. 

Veach added that the board should have handled the situation better that day, revealing the need for the board to create a new code of conduct. 

However, Veach defended the school’s search process, stating that minority candidates were advanced through the process, even though three white men were chosen. Veach also added that no process is perfect and the board’s review shows that it was fair and thorough.