Another week, another inglorious national distinction.
Our state legislature has once again thrust us into the national spotlight in a most embarrassing way, this time due to our GOP-controlled state university system’s massive failure in the forced reopenings of college campuses across the state, which culminated in the cancellation of in-person classes first at UNC-CH and then at NC State University just one week after classes began. For universities across the country, the failure offers a warning about the risks associated with attempting similar reopening tactics this fall. For North Carolinians, the debacle is just the most recent example of the misuse of power by the UNC Board of Governors for partisan ends.
Yes, North Carolina’s public university system, once the crown jewel of our state, has become yet another casualty of the far-right takeover of our state government. Prior to the GOP seizure of our state legislature in 2010, the Board of Governors, which oversees state’s 17-campus public university system, was a bipartisan board with a Democratic lean. But over the past decade, the Republican-controlled NCGA has used its appointment power to gain complete partisan control of the board. Its current Chair is a yacht seller who did not attend a four-year college.
Over the past several years, the Board has crippled the system’s support for civil rights, closing the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity; barring the Center for Civil Rights from engaging in litigation; and creating a new campus “free-speech” policy with strong penalties for student protestors. In 2019, the Board announced a shocking plan to give a white supremacist group $2.5 million along with the recently toppled Silent Sam statue. In June 2020, the NC Senate appointed the godfather of the GOP’s regressive politics of the past decade, Art Pope, to the Board, adding to its extreme politicization.
And this week, the Board disregarded the serious safety concerns of students, faculty, staff, parents, and local leaders because, apparently, the show must go on and the tuition checks must roll in.
University administrators had minimal control in the Board-mandated reopening process. Instead, the GOP-controlled Board stayed in line with local and national GOP rhetoric, pushing relentlessly for a “full-speed ahead” reopening of all UNC campuses, despite warnings from public health officials and widespread student and faculty concerns. In July, they told campus administrators that they could not expect any increased aid to cover corona-related losses and asked chancellors to submit contingency plans for how they would operate if their budgets were cut by 50 percent. And in August, the Board formally instructed all campuses to reopen, despite new case levels being well above school reopening standards in other states.
The Board made it clear throughout the process that individual campus chancellors and boards of trustees had no real decision-making power. Even final decisions about ending-on campus instruction due to infections could only be made by the Board of Governors, a policy that forced the UNC Chapel Hill Faculty Chair to essentially beg the Board of Governors to allow the move to online classes as cases spiked.
The consequences of the Board’s choice to prioritize partisanship over public health are considerable. While students living in residence halls are clearing out, thousands of students living off campus are unable to break their leases, and their continued social activity poses a major risk to the local community. Students returning home will likely carry the virus to their own communities, endangering their families and furthering the spread. As a CNN article bluntly states, more people will die. And with two of the 17 UNC-system campuses ending in-person classes just one week in, it seems only a matter of time before other campuses follow.
The politicization of the Board and the ensuing consequences are a direct result of the extreme-right control of our state government. Our public university system deserves a Board of Governors that prioritizes the health and welfare of its students and staff over partisanship. We deserve a Board of Governors that believes in the value of higher education. Let’s flip North Carolina blue in November so we can restore this crown jewel of our state.