No kidding there are community college interpreters who don't know anything about professional ethics. I've worked with some doozies.
The first place most people find a job out of their ITP is the community college setting because up until now there have been no standardized requirements for interpreting there. So it's also easy for proficient signers with no interpreting education to get jobs there.
This isn't always a disaster but it often is. Getting a certificate or getting a job does not, as others have said, make you a good interpreter. You can have the best language skills in the world and you can be a terrible interpreter. I worked at a school with someone like this. Excellent interpreting skills but his way of interacting with students, other interpreters, and teachers was so abysmal eventually no interpreter or student would work with him again.
"Being a good interpreter" doesn't only mean interpreting well. It means being ethical, knowing the appropriate way of working with deaf and hearing clients, setting boundaries (the biggest problem with untrained interpreters, since they are used to interpreting with their family), and basically being a professional. You do not learn how to be a professional along with learning a language, even if that language is your first.
