NIC: Friends affected by takeover

I have some distressed friends who work for a large company. They have devoted their careers to providing top quality services to customers who want and need what the company provides. It has been a growing and successful company for a very long time, but after a recent hostile takeover, it is now in peril and so are many jobs.

Providing something people appreciatively use to grow and thrive has been a noble profession for my friends. Not long ago, however, factions expressed opinions that the company’s services were misleading those who used them. However, the company has always provided quality certified services and has been routinely verified by outside inspectors. Without open analysis, conclusion, planning or explanation, the volatile opinions motivated an extremist intervention.

Accomplished company leadership was illicitly replaced so the company’s operations and purpose can be altered. Ill-conceived changes were pursued aggressively with a measure of hostility and without civility or respect. The rapid changes made so far have undermined the company’s administrative capability, financial viability, certification standards, employee morale, customer trust and institutional survival.

Companies in such situations usually receive national sympathy. These are circumstances that violate our sense of fair play, the protection of consumers, open solutions, integrity and justice. The fact that this situation is happening in our home town, to North Idaho College, seems impossible. People here care too much about the value of education and about each other to let this happen. Yet, I still worry about my friends.

GARY COFFMAN

Coeur d’Alene