In a raw and extraordinary meeting that played last week like a mash-up between pro rasslin and “The Real Housewives,” the UNC Board of Governors made one thing painfully clear to UNC administrators:
Don’t talk. Don’t breathe. And definitely don’t write any letters to the governor without asking the full board “May I?” in advance.
The sparks that erupted into flames had been evident in August, when some board members expressed their dissatisfaction with a perfectly reasonable letter from top UNC leaders asking Gov. Roy Cooper for state assistance with security during a protest over a Confederate statue on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus.
How dare they ask for help to prevent people from getting hurt.
Nor was it as if the letter was some top-secret communiqué dropped off in a parking garage in an unmarked envelope. It was signed by UNC system President Margaret Spellings, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt, Board of Governors Chairman Lou Bissette, N.C. Department of Public Safety Secretary Eric Hooks and UNC Board of Trustees Chairman Haywood Cochrane. Yet, somehow 15 members of the Board of Governors found the letter objectionable and, by implication, insubordinate.
“The letter exuded a weakness and hand wringing that does not accurately reflect the Board’s opinion about how the potential of campus unrest should be treated,” they said in an email sent by board member and former Raleigh Mayor Tom Fetzer.
As, however, became clear during last week’s meeting, the real issue wasn’t the letter. It’s a desire to micromanage the affairs of the UNC campuses and to impose a political agenda in the process. Board members also proposed reorganizing Spellings’ staff and moving the UNC system’s headquarters out of Chapel Hill.
Then they followed through the next day, as expected, by neutering the UNC School of Law’s Center for Civil Rights by removing its power to file lawsuits on behalf of poor communities. The stated reason? That the center should stick to more academic pursuits. In other words, a place that teaches litigation shouldn’t be allowed to litigate.
And, by that logic, a medical school shouldn’t allow students to treat patients and a trade school shouldn’t teach carpenters to hammer nails.
It appears as if the GOP-controlled board fancies itself qualified to run the state’s university system.
Who needs chancellors and provosts, much less a UNC president?
It’s a playbook similar to the GOP-majority General Assembly’s, where meddling in local affairs — as opposed to setting broad policies — has become a way of life.
Which brings us back to the Confederate statue of Silent Sam. The Board of Governors (at least its majority) seems miffed about that issue on several levels:
- That any letter to He Who Shall Not Be Named (the Democratic governor) is verboten.
- That it does not respect the authority of even Spellings, a Republican handpicked by fellow Republicans to succeed an ousted Democrat, Tom Ross.
- And that it seems implicitly supportive of Confederate monuments, as is the legislature, which passed a law in 2015 that forbids local governments from removing them without approval from the state Historic Commission.
Last week’s tumultuous turn also could be payback to Spellings, who served as George W. Bush’s secretary of education. In July, she invited the president of a major accrediting organization, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, to speak to the board about the respective roles of university boards versus the university administration.
“When boards start micromanaging, you’re stepping out of your lane and it gets my attention,” Belle Wheelan told the Board of Governors in July, warning that such meddling could jeopardize accreditation.
That lesson, it appears, did not take.
from Don T Breathe - Google News http://ift.tt/2h1b56b
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