By forcing ocamlc to generate a .cmi from a .ml as opposed to a .mli (by renaming acceptors.mli to something else and retaining only acceptors.ml) we were able to get the .cmo to properly compile with one_step. we tested the function from the examples.ml file and it seems to work.
we need to investigate the compile sequence done by the makefile to determine why, originally, our modified .mli was not being compiled into a proper .cmi file. Then we can compile a .cmi from acceptors.cmi and, subsequently, a .cmo.