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Editor's Note: Because of incorrect information provided to the News & Record, this article misreported who pays the bill for a personal trainer for the wife of Greensboro College President Craven Williams. Williams personally reimburses Greensboro College for that expense.

A week ago, a lineman from Duke Energy handed an $8,000 disconnect notice to the undergrad working the front desk at Reynolds student union, saying Greensboro College had two hours to pay before the power would be turned off.

Monday, a sheriff’s deputy served the college’s vice president for business a summons to appear in small-claims court on a $1,245 office supply bill.

How bleak is the financial outlook at Greensboro College, where salaries were cut 20 percent this spring in an emergency move to avoid layoffs?

Bleak enough that a restructuring consultant last week sent a letter asking creditors to be patient in collecting past due bills of $974,508 — most of them owed to local businesses.

Having met its June payroll Friday, according to Chief Restructuring Officer Edward Sanz, the college must now raise enough money to keep operating through the summer until students return in full force this fall.

“It’s a tough patch, period, but we’re going to get through it,” said Sanz, whose Charlotte-based Naviscent Group was brought in by the college’s board of trustees two months ago to reorganize the school’s debt. “All the colleges are getting slammed right now.”

True, the recession has hit campuses private and public, decimating endowments while drying up gifts from well-heeled benefactors.

But for a small liberal arts college that has rarely made headlines in its 161-year history, the depth of Greensboro College’s financial woes is drawing notice.

So much so, that a national professional journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education, last week used the 1,300-student Greensboro College as a textbook example of, basically, how not to react to a crisis.

Under the front-page headline, “Broad Pay Cuts Make Deep Dents in Morale,” the story quoted, at length, anonymous faculty members highly critical of Craven Williams, the school’s president since 1993.

Williams, infuriated by the article and by recent discussion in the media of his $403,000 annual salary, said this week he has no intention of stepping down in response to the problems, as anonymous messages circulated on campus and on message boards have suggested.

“I don’t have anything to say to that,” Williams said. “Anybody can just say anything when they’re anonymous. Of course, it bothers me.”

Williams, who took the 20 percent cut along with his staff, has for years worn the hat of campus ambassador and fundraiser-in-chief.

As such, says Sanz, the president’s use of a Sunset Drive home the college owns in Irving Park, complete with maid service and BMW, are the cost of doing business. They are, Sanz argues, the necessary accoutrements for entertaining would-be major donors.

But the college, in contrast, can barely meet its own basic needs, according to the school’s own list of outstanding bills obtained by the News & Record.

For example:

ARAMARK, the cafeteria  service, was owed $136,889. Of that, $93,564 was more than two months in arrears.

Waste Management’s bill was $13,388 past due; Royal Tours, the buses the college hires to transport athletes, was owed $50,276; a water bill for the city of Greensboro was over 90 days late at $6,500. Duke Energy was posting a $1,862 balance, of which $758 was two months late.

Karen Riffanacht, the student who was working at Reynolds Center when the Duke Energy truck arrived, said she thought the cutoff notice was a mistake.

“It was a very big surprise,” she said. “They said 'You have two hours to pay it.’ They didn’t want to shut it off and then have to come all the way back to turn it back on.”

Sanz called the incident a misunderstanding on Duke Energy’s part, over deposits being negotiated on several college accounts.

The college’s bills show tabs being run up at competing businesses — $4,122 at Office Depot, $5,847 at OfficeMax. Insurance bills, medical bills and legal bills are unpaid, as is money owed to nonprofit concerns such as $6,000 to the Berkshire Theatre Festival.

In addition, a membership at Greensboro Country Club has fallen from 60 to 90 days behind, according to the billing records.

Robert Stout, chairman of the school’s Board of Trustees  was out of state this week and could not be reached for comment. Other board members reached this week referred all questions to Stout.

Sanz said the fact that faculty members had not “bolted for the door” after the 20 percent pay cut was announced indicated the strong loyalty professors feel to Greensboro College. He conceded, however, that the tight job market in academia, as in other sectors, could also be a factor in retaining faculty.

Several professors contacted by the newspaper this week declined to comment, mindful of the school’s strict policy to direct reporters to school spokeswoman Cyndie Basinger.

Basinger said the college president would select faculty to be interviewed. She then sent questions to Dean of Faculty Paul Leslie.

Leslie said that since the pay cut, just two of 75 full-time faculty members had resigned to take other academic posts,  but that both had likely been courted over time by other institutions.

Shortly after the pay cut was announced, an anonymous letter, supposedly written by faculty members, made the rounds on campus, blaming Williams for the college’s crisis and criticizing his salary and benefits.

Asked whether that view, repeated in last week’s Chronicle, represents a consensus, Dean Leslie said his faculty “has not been polled as to their concerns.”

But as for the trouble the campus is having paying its bills to local businesses, Leslie said the struggle the school is having is obvious to faculty.

“We are aware that there are open invoices,” he said. “We’re working as diligently as possible so that this will have no effect on what happens in the classroom.”

Trustee chairman Stout is quoted in the Chronicle  as estimating that the school needs to raise “$5 million” in order to operate through the lean summer months, but Sanz said Friday he felt that figure was too high. Currently, the school is in the process of renegotiating its line of credit with Bank of America.

The good news for the school is that freshman enrollments are nearly in line with last year. But that won’t erase the cause of the school’s financial tumble.

The school’s endowment, against which the college had already been borrowing, lost its value on the market, plummeting from a starting point of $19 million down to its current  $12 million.

With many wealthy investors and private foundations in the same boat, the large gifts of previous years have not been forthcoming at Greensboro College, nor at other institutions in the area.

“The college lives on contributions and endowments,” observed Sanz, “but retiring a debt is a bit of a challenge. It’s not like raising money for a building that you can put someone’s name on. You can’t name a debt after someone.”

Contact Lorraine Ahearn at 373-7334 or lorraine.ahearn@news-record.com