This article encourages college presidents and trustees to prepare for public relations challenges by tracking issues through four distinct stages: fringe, emerging, getting hot, and white hot/too late. "Fringe" refers to, for example, people discussing an issue at conferences, in professional publications, or among a few concerned members of the community. The issue does not yet appear on the mainstream radar screen. "Emerging" means that there is now far greater media interest in the issue, and the issue persists at a slow, steady simmer. "Getting Hot" means that there is much public discussion about the issue and considerable criticism that nothing is happening. "White Hot/Too Late" means that when an issue has reached this stage, there is widespread perception that the institution has neither the will nor the ability to deal with it adequately. The author uses the example of the current accountability debate in higher education to explore the most frequent responses to each of the four issue-maturity stages. Finally, the author suggests what trustees and chief executives should be doing to avoid the escalation of issues that end up out of control in the public arena.