Accreditor Pressure Forces City College to Overhaul Broken Student Complaint System

By Patricia Baldwin

After City College’s Title IX coordinator left, student complaints continued to flow into an email inbox that no one was reading. It took pressure from the college’s accreditor to force the administration to act.

Lisa Cooper Wilkins, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, updated the Associated Students Executive Council on Friday, March 20, about the student grievances that had gone unaddressed and the new platform for submitting grievances that will be available in fall 2026.

In the fall of 2025, as in previous semesters, City College students submitted complaints to the Title IX coordinator. Title IX prohibits sex and gender discrimination by education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance. However, Tony Brown, J.D., who served as the compliance officer, Title IX coordinator and Section 504 coordinator, had left City College.

Student complaints continued to go to an unmonitored email account. Students whose complaints were not being addressed (or even read) decided to take action with outside partners. According to Wilkins, some students directed their complaints to the ACCJC. 

The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) is the body that oversees City College’s accreditation. City College found itself in hot water with the ACCJC in 2012, triggering an accreditation crisis.

“This has been a recurrent problem — when someone leaves their position at City College, there is not a plan to keep the service up,” said Student Vice Chancellor Malinalli Villalobos.

After ACCJC brought the issue to City College’s attention, the administration started working on a new Student Complaints and Grievances Process.

The district administration has decided on Maxient, a workflow solution, as the platform for student complaints going forward. 

Wilkins explained that students can submit multiple types of concerns or complaints — academic, non-academic, Title 5, Title IX — to Maxient. Therefore, the student won’t need to hunt for how to submit their particular type of complaint.

“This is clearer than [the process] we had before,” said Student Trustee Angelica Campos.

During the initial contact, the complaint will be considered informal, but can immediately be recategorized as formal. The onus will no longer be on the student to resolve the issue informally on their own.

The complaint can then move through the process without student action. If, for example, a complaint started as an academic issue but was later determined to be administrative, the complaint could be recategorized in the system without the student having to take additional action. 

Since records would be centralized in the system, the student would not have to meet with a new individual or committee. The new individual or committee could access the records.

The appeals process would remain the same, with the Chancellor adjudicating. And, as a last resort, students could reach out to outside partners if they were not satisfied with the appeals process or outcome.

VC Wilkins was presenting the new process to the Executive Committee for feedback. Formal Administrative Policies (APs) and Board Policies (BPs) will come later.

The new Student Complaints and Grievances Process through Maxient could be available during the summer term. However, the target date for the full process and policies to be in place is the fall of 2026.

Student- at-large Lydia Hernandez asked what was happening with “the students’ emails that had been sent into the black hole?” Wilkins said that they had been collected and that Academic Affairs had reviewed and begun addressing them.