The UNC System sent a loud and clear message to the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees, but Chair John Preyer clearly doesn’t get it.
A Jan. 12 memo to the trustees from UNC System President Peter Hans and Board of Governors Chair Randy Ramsey told the board, as one trustee said, “to stay in our lane.”
But Korie Dean of The News & Observer reported last week that Preyer, “disagrees with that interpretation,” telling The N&O the memo was “an administrative, housekeeping thing.”
Preyer is wrong. It was more than housekeeping. It was more like being taken to the woodshed.
As Dean reported, the clear purpose of the memo to the trustees is “to remind them of their responsibilities and scale back their powers.”
You can read her story here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article287138430.html#storylink=cpy
The story details eight powers, mostly related to personnel and salary, that the memo took from the Board of Trustees and reassigned to the interim chancellor. It also notes that Hans and Ramsey reminded trustees to follow state law, system policy and their own bylaws in setting meeting agendas.
Dean reported that the memo came up at a March 27 meeting of the board’s budget and finance committee.
There, trustee Jim Blaine — former chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and a well-connected Republican political consultant — said he believed either the General Assembly or the Board of Governors would “follow Florida’s path” this year and potentially eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts at state universities.
Blaine said UNC staff should “develop a contingency plan for that expectation.”
Trustee Ralph Meekins, who has served on the board since 2019, brought up the Hans-Ramsey memo and urged board members to not “jump the gun on those kinds of issues.”
Meekins said, “We’ve gotten a memo from them recently telling us to stay in our lane. And I think this is one area where we need to stay in our lane. Let’s wait and see what they say, and then we can adapt and we can meet whatever the ramifications are from any changes in our DEI.”
Read the full memo here: https://coalitionforcarolinafoundation.org/letter-from-ramsey-and-hans-to-preyer-and-roberts/
We strongly support the memo. Preyer should respect it.
We first reported the memo March 29. We called it “significant – and laudable – action to support sound leadership at UNC-Chapel Hill.”
Read our report here: https://coalitionforcarolinafoundation.org/a-big-step-forward-unc-system-president-and-board-of-governors-rein-in-trustees-at-carolina/
Our Coalition has spoken out strongly against trustees overstepping their authority and improperly interfering in campus operations.
The memo, tellingly, was sent the same day that Hans appointed Lee Roberts interim chancellor.
We were gratified that Roberts told our March webinar that trustees’ role should be “guidance, advice and advocacy” and emphasized that he reports directly to President Hans.
But Preyer, the trustees’ chair, told The N&O that he viewed the memo as “an administrative, housekeeping thing to bring UNC and the other school into the same position of all the system schools.”
It is much more than that.
It is a clear directive to the trustees.
It is a good plan for a sound, shared system of governance at UNC.
Preyer should read it and heed it.