Freshman year, it is evident that the sprawling behemoth which is college is nothing like high school. Appalachian State University, for one, has its own court system, police force, and public transportation system (because, let’s be honest, AppalCart might be funded by the public, but it’s pretty evident that the bus system is mainly for students). It’s hard enough to get the hang of exam week, semester schedules and class signups, but delve deeper into the rather un-transparent world that is college and you’ll find a strange and independent kind of politics as complicated as the kind which runs our country.
The Board of Governors is part of this system. A controlling body made up of 28 members, the BOG run nearly every major college and university in North Carolina under the UNC system from Winston-Salem State University, to UNC Chapel Hill, to App State on top of the mountain. Their control over universities is vast, and the BOG have made decisions which range from controlling tuition and fees, to managing degree credit, to making student ID cards a form of voter ID.
North Carolina is not the only system with a Board of Governors. A similar structure exists across most states of the U.S., and a national conversation is beginning over how bodies like the BOG should exercise their power on growing college issues.
Late last month, the Board of Governors arrived on campus for an ordinary meeting which centered mostly around the degree at which to raise student fees. The appearance sparked controversy on and off campus. A group of students (with an affiliation to Ignite NC, a left leaning organization which has come to blows with the BOG in the past) gathered to protest on Sanford Mall, braving the cold winds to dispute a number of the Board’s decisions. Their principle issue, however, centered around what students felt was a lack of representation.
Photo courtesy of Ariana Blackwood
One of the students leading the group (who requested that we witheld using their name in this article), said that the BOG “silences students and blocks those who want to voice their concerns.”
Another protest sign read, “#BoardOfBusiness,” likely a jab at college board members’ tendencies to serve on educational and corporation boards simultaneously. Meanwhile, a scathing article by the WRAL criticized the BOG of infighting and general incompetence two days before the meeting. “[The BOG] is no lemonade stand. It is a $3.2. billion business,” the opinion read. “Stop the patronage and political games.”
Most of the fiery response comes from the Board’s major lack of non-partisanship. The BOG is, in fact, elected by the North Carolina General Assembly, and in recent years it has been used by political parties as an extra sphere of control in the fight between who controls the state. At present, that would be the Republican Party. In 2017, the GOP stripped some of the Democratic governor’s power to elect BOG members and moved it into legislators’ hands. Complaints have been made, including by former Board members, that BOG appointees have become increasingly interested in primarily serving the interests of state legislature.
Republican-dominated or not, there has been quite a bit of aforementioned infighting, over the election of the system’s president in 2015 and political issues such as the toppling of Confederate statue “Silent Sam” and the shutdown of the UNC Center for Civil Rights (which did pro bono work as part of the UNC School of Law). The Restore Campus Free Speech Act, which became law in 2017, requires the BOG to develop policies and statutes preserving free speech. Part of the Restore Campus Free Speech Act involves protecting speakers from having events disrupted by interfering groups. However, those who oppose the bill have made the position that these policies are still, at the heart of it, regulations which will restrict free speech.
This was a key focus of one of the student protestors, who complained that this new move “was billed as an attempt to level the playing field, when really it just cuts off both voices, on the left and the right side of the political spectrum.”
The future direction of the BOG remains uncertain, especially as they continue to operate mostly out of public view, and with very limited restriction. The controversy that surrounds the Board of Governors, and similar structures around the country, is growing but still remains a marginal issue. Meanwhile, the seats on the Board continue to draw the eye of candidates unexperienced in the educational field, promising status in a way that has little do with colleges (Chairman Harry Smith, according to the News Observer, wasn’t even aware of what the BOG was when he was first solicited for the position) and an income that, for the UNC system president, runs about $800,000 a year.