COD Board Candidate Was Fired from College After Sexual Harassment Charges

A candidate in the contested election for College of DuPage Board of Trustees was previously fired from the college’s aquatics department after multiple people alleged incidents of verbal and/or physical sexual harassment, the Daily Herald reports. 

According to the paper, Frank Flores Jr. was employed as a temporary assistant aquatics manager in fall 2010 until a female lifeguard reported verbal sexual harassment, a claim corroborated by another female student, and a male student who also alleged physical harassment. A patron filed a separate complaint that Flores had made comments to her like, “I want to taste you” and “I peed in the pool,” the paper said. 

No criminal charges were filed, but after an investigation, Flores was fired on Dec. 2, 2010, and was made ineligible to be hired again, The Herald reports.

Flores, who is endorsed by the COD Faculty Association, told The Herald he was resented by employees for replacing a well-liked manager and "dismissed unjustly after a cursory review of the facts.” He said the charges were “malicious and unsubstantiated,” accusing COD President Robert Breuder of “digging in the basket of the unsubstantiated." 

Read the full story at the Daily Herald website.