Bermuda College president Michael Orenduff yesterday accused this newspaper of sinking to a "new low in journalism" with this week's story on a report on the College.

At a press conference yesterday Mr. Orenduff said that the report was a year old and "full of falsehoods".

"The report was compiled by Mr. Edwin Wilson, an honourable man," said Mr. Orenduff. "But some of the people who spoke to him were not so honourable, and the lies they told him now grace the pages of our newspaper."

Flanked by a number of key College executives, Mr. Orenduff said that the "falsehoods" had been "easily disproved" when the report was published and that this newspaper could have checked the accuracy of the allegations before printing the story.

"As just one example, some disgruntled person told Mr. Wilson that Jeff Fino (a former College employee) had approached KalMar Richards, principal of CedarBridge, about a College employee being transferred to CedarBridge. When we read that, we asked Mrs. Richards if that were true, and she said it was not. Indeed she reported that she didn't even know who Jeff Fino is. Another claim was that black males had been passed over at Tech Hall in favour of a less qualified person. Again that claim is totally false. The head of Tech Hall is Kevin Bean, a black male, and the person who stood in for him temporarily while we were realigning operations and while Mr. Bean was seconded to Canada for further professional development was also a black male, Mr. Michael Stowe."

Dr. Orenduff continued: "Ethical journalism would have demanded that the newspaper check the accuracy of these two and all other allegations before printing them in their paper. Obviously they did not do so, choosing instead to engage in 'drive by journalism' by just shooting out random anonymous allegations without any regard for truth."

Dr. Orenduff then claimed that The Royal Gazette had the report for "well over a month" and "chose to publish it on the day that students were registering."

That, he said, was "particularly appalling".

"We understand that any newspaper must print both good and bad news, and the paper is not responsible for when good and bad events happen. But this is not an event that just happened; there is nothing timely about this story. The Royal Gazette had no valid journalistic reason to print this story when it did."

He added that a recent poll had found that most residents had a favourable opinion of the College and that it was about to start the next semester with "the best staff we have ever had, and with a new and bold experiment in information age education wherein all full-time students will be using notebook computers."

"It is regrettable that the RG chose to dredge up stale and inaccurate allegations rather than telling the Bermudian people about how proud they should be of Bermuda College."

College vice-president Larita Alford, Chief Financial Officer Ann Parsons, Eugenie Simmons, director of the Centre for Professional and Career Enhancement and other senior staff members were on hand to support the comments.

In her prepared statement Ms Parsons said that the story had caused her "great dismay and disappointment" because, she said, it did not reflect the present situation within the Information Systems department.

"With the support and guidance of both the Board of Governors and the president, I was given the mandate to take the necessary steps to ensure that the College developed a first class technological infrastructure," she said.

"The College has made tremendous strides during the last eight months leveraged off the solid foundation our laptop initiative pilot of 2002 had established."

She added: "I am pleased to state that we are about to bring to fruition an IT wireless network, that will be the envy of most major Universities and Colleges in North America and will set the College apart."

Government last year commissioned retired civil servant Edwin Wilson to conduct a fact finding exercise into reasons for high turnover in the Information Services Department and related matters.

He completed his study in October and among his conclusions was that there was a widespread perception among College staff that black men were being held back professionally.

As reported in Wednesday and Thursday's edition of this paper, the College disputed some of Mr. Wilson's conclusions.

Yesterday, The Royal Gazette asked for, and received, a complete copy of its response to the Wilson report.

Mrs. James Barnett said that the response had not been provided because we had not specifically asked for it.

In it, the College agreed "in a very general sense" with "the spirit of Mr. Wilson's findings" that its staffing policies and procedures "leave much to be desired".

"The processes involved have been historically flawed, and regrettably are not much improved today. There are glaring inconsistencies that remain in the hiring policies - and those policies that do exist are rendered impotent by an equally long history of non-compliance."

But the College took issue with some of the details in Mr. Wilson's report.

"The issues raised (on the Information Systems Department) are somewhat symbiotic of a self-perpetuating trend that is reflected even in the impressions formed and articulated by Mr. Wilson. It is a curious mix of fact and fiction, resulting in a somewhat larger than life representation of the issue itself."