I am making this statement on the record today to request that the Board of Trustees for the College of DuPage publicly issues its own statement denouncing the underhanded and unfair treatment of one of the College’s most distinguished alums, Dr. Maureen Dunne.

She is a tremendous person who is running in an election to join this board on April 2. She has received intimidating phone calls to try to get her to drop out of the race, unfounded rumors have been actively spread alleging complete falsehoods, and recently she and her husband even received a threatening note directed at their children. She also was the subject of an attack in the Edgar County Watchdogs blog recently which reported information that has been proven to be completely false. This is utterly unacceptable. 

Maureen is a former student that we, as a College and community, should be extremely proud of in the school’s history, going on to become a Rhodes Scholar, technology entrepreneur, and advocate for people with autism. She is a prominent member of our community, an active Rotary Club member, the founder of the Transition2Success program for high schoolers with autism, and the cofounder of Code DuPage, a program to help high school kids develop greater technology literacy. 

She is everything we should want as a leader in our community and should be given a fair chance to vie for this board without being subjected to harassment and a coordinated disinformation campaign. 

So, I am asking this Board to publicly denounce these tactics and to lend its support for a free and fair election so that we may benefit from an educated electorate voting for who it believes are the most qualified candidates based on factual and sound information.