For thousandsof faculty, students, and alumni of Suffolk University, it has been painful to watch its board of trustees inflict more wounds on the school and its reputation. Just when the university needs good publicity — as admitted students decide whether to attend the heavily tuition-dependent downtown institution next fall — the trustees have cast it in an unflattering spotlight with their ill-advised effort to fire president Margaret McKenna. McKenna is the school’s fifth president in five years. The campus soap opera reinforces an image of instability at Suffolk, and threatens to undermine all the good work the school does.

The trustees, who are supposed to look out for the best interests of the nonprofit university, must confront an uncomfortable possibility: that they, and not McKenna, are the problem. A board that goes through presidents like batteries, draws scolding from law enforcement and the regional academic accrediting body, and has left itself vulnerable to accusations of conflicts of interest is detracting from the school it’s supposed to serve. The board needs changes to its policies — and its personnel. If the trustees won’t act, accreditors and credit rating agencies may need to make themselves heard.

Problems at the Suffolk board are nothing new. In 2009, the attorney general’s office found the university hadn’t adequately monitored a lobbying contract it granted to then-trustee Robert B. Crowe, who was paid $10,000 a month to represent the university even as he sat on its board. Public-relations honcho George Regan, who also has a hefty contract with Suffolk, was later forced to leave the board. But one of his employees, Julie Kahn, is a trustee, creating an impression that he still influences school policy. During the school’s accreditation process, a step necessary to obtain federal funding, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges noted Suffolk’s outdated bylaws and the heavy-handed role of its board. In the 2014 letter, the accreditors wrote that they expected to see the university institute modern bylaws along with a “return to a more appropriate oversight and advisory role’’ for the board.

The trustees’ effort to run McKenna out of the job, which she has only held for seven months, plays out against that backdrop. To justify getting rid of her, the trustees have made a few curious accusations about the school’s financial state and her management style — none of which, McKenna says, the board brought to her beforehand (one of their objections was a sponsorship deal with the Globe’s business side). The board reportedly hopes to replace McKenna with former attorney general Martha Coakley. But in a measure of how little stock the Suffolk community puts in the board’s assertions, Suffolk’s faculty senate gave McKenna a vote of confidence on Friday after news of the board’s intentions emerged.

Before it even considers canning McKenna, the board needs to take steps to improve its own standing in the Suffolk community, with a full disclosure of conflicts of interest by board members. And it should follow through on the 2014 recommendations by the accrediting association.

The trustees have raised concerns about the school’s credit ratings, the institution is more likely to be hurt by prolonged instability fomented by the trustees themselves. The accreditors might also need to offer a timely reminder to the board of its 2014 pledge to modernize the board’s role; the hint of losing federal funding if Suffolk loses accreditation might just serve to focus the trustees’ minds. If anything good is to come out the Suffolk debacle, it’s renewed attention to a governance structure that needs improvement at an important Boston institution.