UNC-Chapel Hill’s largest athletic booster club asked a state agency to approve $98 million in bonds for renovations to the Dean Smith Center and Kenan Stadium and construction of multiple new sports facilities. Skeptical members of the state board controlling the debt said not so fast. N.C. Treasurer Dale Folwell, board chairman of the N.C....
The UNC-Chapel Hill faculty wants a seat at the table for discussions over the fate of Silent Sam. The Faculty Council last month approved a resolution for a faculty committee dedicated to providing input to university administration about what to do with the Confederate statue. “Faculty Council shall establish a committee of faculty who represent...
More than 120 high-profile supporters of East Carolina University sent a letter Tuesday afternoon to UNC System President Margaret Spellings, Interim UNC President Dr. Bill Roper, the UNC Board of Governors, and ECU’s Board of Trustees, asking all to allow Chancellor Cecil Staton “to continue in his position without continued threats,” and calling for the...
[Please see editor’s note at the end of this story.] The leader of the University of North Carolina Board of Governors has abandoned his promise to cut all ties with East Carolina University. BOG Chairman Harry Smith has a controversial relationship with ECU, his alma mater and the third largest university in the UNC System. Tensions...
Throughout my career in journalism, I’ve tried to make it a point to learn something from all each of my editors, even those I often questioned, or even disliked. One such editor, who falls into that latter category, sometimes made points that were both salient and eloquent. Words matter, he once said. Each and every...
Teachers and parents, we have a trust problem. Just 36 percent of public school teachers express “complete” or “a lot of” trust in parents, EdChoice’s new “Schooling in America Survey” says. What’s eroding trust? One likely culprit: Parental expectations are sky-high. Harried millennial parents want schools to teach skills once considered part of child-rearing. In a new Walton Family...
The saga of Silent Sam will continue into 2019. Last year ended with a modest truce. A group of faculty and teaching assistants pulled back a threat to withhold student grades if the Confederate monument were returned to its original site on McCorkle Place on the UNC Chapel Hill campus. But the UNC System’s Board...
Neither Democrats nor Republicans in Washington seems to have the courage of their purported convictions, and few have offered anything approaching a viable plan for balancing the budget.
Republicans have been able to cut tax rates, balance budgets, and increase spending on high-priority items since taking control of the N.C. General Assembly in 2011. But they will face some new challenges as they return to the budget process in the new year. Joseph Coletti, John Locke Foundation senior fellow, outlines those challenges. Nobel...
Was Apple’s choice of Austin, Texas, over the Research Triangle for its new, $1 billion campus a win or a loss for North Carolina? The answer isn’t as obvious as local boosters would have you believe. Sure, the sudden infusion of capital investment and (eventually) high-paying, high-skilled jobs would have been a boon for the...
University of North Carolina System President Margaret Spellings is about to leave her job in Chapel Hill, saddling her successor with a daunting task: wrangling a perfect storm of campus and state politics. On Dec. 14, while Spellings gave her final remarks to the UNC Board of Governors, dozens of demonstrators gathered in the rain...
