Community College of Philadelphia holds commencement amid leadership tumult
1,800 students graduate as former president and board trade allegations in court.
Saturday was a birthday to remember for Fatoumata Sacko.
The Community College of Philadelphia mathematics major rang in her 22nd trip around the sun on the stage of Temple University’s Liacouras Center, where she delivered the college’s commencement address to 1,800 fellow members of the school’s 2025 graduating class.
Sacko, who moved to Philadelphia — and the United States — from the West African nation of Mali in November 2022 when she was 19 years old, spoke of the community she found at the college as an immigrant and a new mother.
“This is what CCP gave us: the power to rise no matter where we started,” Sacko said. “Each of us has overcome something and each of us is proof that, with community, we can push through anything,” Sacko said.
At the moment, the school’s leadership finds itself pushing through a mushrooming controversy over the dismissal of its former president, Donald “Guy” Generals Jr.
The college’s board of trustees removed Generals from his position in April, voting not to renew his contract and placing him on paid administrative leave until his term ends in June.
Generals, 69 and a former vice president for academic affairs at New Jersey’s Mercer County Community College, had led the school since 2014.
In a lawsuit filed last week, Generals alleged he was fired as retaliation for refusing to direct college contracts to individuals and businesses with personal connections to board chair Harold T. Epps.
In a statement, the board of trustees called the allegations “frivolous and without merit,” and said it “intends to vigorously defend against them.”
None of the commencement’s speakers addressed the swirling controversy on Saturday.
In introductory remarks, Alycia Marshall, a former provost and vice president for academic and student success whom the board had appointed interim president less than a week earlier, relayed her story of overcoming challenges to become first a mathematics professor and, eventually, department head at Maryland’s Anne Arundel Community College.
Lauding those graduates who had faced down challenges of their own — such as financial struggles or raising children — while attending classes, Marshall referenced Maya Angelou’s poem “And Still I Rise.”
“If you are proud of yourself today — and I want you to say it with me — and still, I rise,” Marshall said.
Speaking after Marshall, Epps similarly avoided any mention of the dispute in which he figures prominently, instead urging graduates to trust in their abilities as they go forth into the world of work and life.
“Let this ceremony be just the beginning — not the end — of occasions to celebrate your accomplishments,” Epps said.
Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, the first Black lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania history and, at 35, the youngest lieutenant governor in the country, delivered the commencement address.
Davis, a first-generation college graduate and former state representative, spoke of his working-class roots growing up in southwestern Pennsylvania and urged graduates to appreciate the trailblazers who came before them as he recalled his own family’s journey from the South as part of the Great Migration.
“I don’t think in my grandparents’ wildest dreams would they think their grandson would someday occupy the second highest office in this commonwealth,” he said.
And he exhorted the assembled graduates to embrace service to their communities, whatever their chosen fields.
“First and foremost, work to serve the people in your life and in your community. Help those who are less fortunate,” he said. “Fight injustice wherever and whenever you see it.”
Just the day before the commencement, a judge denied Generals’ request for an injunction to reinstate him as president.
The ruling came after Generals had expanded upon his allegations in a court filing that claimed Epps and other board members pressured him and other administrators to approve a contract from a workforce development firm headed by Epps’ daughter, among other “individuals and businesses with whom (Epps) had personal and professional ties.”
Kyle D. Anderson, a spokesperson for the board, called the claims in the new filing “patently false” and characterized them as an effort “to discredit and defame” Epps and the board after they refused Generals’ demand for an excessive severance package.
“This is a blatant and unscrupulous attempt to shake down the board and a publicly funded institution,” Anderson said.
The controversy burst into public view just a couple weeks after what was a triumph for the school’s administration: the settlement of a new contract with the college’s faculty and staff union.
The agreement was reached just hours before workers were set to strike, potentially disrupting final exams and the commencement.
Instead, in a nearly full Liacouras Center, beaming graduates walked the stage, waving to cheering classmates, family, and friends in the stands, their futures bright even as the path forward for the university and its leadership is decidedly less clear.