All Mountain State University officials can do now is wait.
“We’re just in a holding pattern,” Mountain State Interim President Richard Sours told MetroNews.
He and six other Mountain State representatives were in Chicago earlier this week to make a final appeal to an Independent Panel, formed by the Higher Learning Commission, for continued accreditation.
If that is denied, Sours says there are no more options and the school will be forced to close its doors at the end of the year.
“There aren’t any more steps for us,” Sours said of Mountain State’s future. “It depends on the ruling of this panel and I really can’t predict what they will decide.”
Sours says school officials believe they were in compliance with the HLC’s standards at the time the national accrediting body decided to pull the Raleigh County school’s accreditation.
That’s the argument, he says, they made again on Tuesday. “We were trying to emphasize the key points and say to the panel, ‘Go back and look through the evidence fairly and objectively,’ Sours said.
“I hope that they will do that and I hope that, as a result of that, they will conclude that we were, in fact, in compliance.”
Those with the HLC disagree and representatives detailed the reasons for deciding to pull the accreditation for the Independent Panel as well this week. The panel’s members have not dealt with the Mountain State case before now.
The University of Charleston has already been taking steps to take over Mountain State’s operations in both Beckley and Martinsburg if accreditation is not restored beyond January first.
The Independent Panel’s decision is expected to be issued by December 18th and it will be final.
That decision will determine whether the planned December 19th commencement ceremony is the last ever at Mountain State University.