2020 has been a busy year for email correspondence from the NC State administration. From the sudden announcement in March of an extended spring break, to our near-daily updates on new COVID-19 clusters back in August, we’ve heard a lot more from NC State Dining, University Housing and, of course, Chancellor Randy Woodson than normal.
Although these entities are responsible for most of our day-to-day interactions with the University, they have relatively little power to set policies for NC State as a whole. Those decisions are instead made by the UNC System Board of Governors (BOG), which is in charge of setting policies and carrying out laws passed by the North Carolina General Assembly (GA) for all public universities in North Carolina.
Members of the board are not elected, but they are appointed to four-year terms by the GA, which is up for election this November. Both institutions are sources of the policies that govern our university, and the BOG also appoints the chancellor. I’ve spoken previously on some controversial or outright harmful policies both bodies have enacted for all universities, including a “free speech” policy which looked like it could hamper students’ right to protest, and a policy which banned universities from offering gender-neutral housing options.
These, as well as the COVID-19 response we’re all intimately familiar with, have directly impacted NC State students, and we have had little opportunity to submit our opinions on them. That could change this year, however. For the first time in a decade, both chambers of the GA are competitive, partially as a result of a court order which overturned a gerrymandered map back in 2019. It’s crucial that students turn out in large numbers for these state legislature races since they have the most direct impact on how our education happens.
All of the current board members were appointed or reappointed by an unconstitutionally gerrymandered legislature. It should be no surprise then that the current BOG is woefully unrepresentative of either the student body or North Carolina as a whole: 73% of its members are white men, and in the last round of appointments, no registered Democrats were appointed while two new Republicans joined the board, making it politically unbalanced as well. Ironically, in response to criticism from Democrats during that process, North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger said, “There’s a lot of diversity amongst Republicans.” The six people appointed included only one woman and one Black man.
This election will have consequences for the rest of the decade. Not only will legislators be able to appoint more representative members to the BOG in 2021, but they will also redraw legislative districts, deciding for the next 10 years whether or not voters will have access to competitive races or be locked in gerrymandered districts.
Student engagement could make a serious difference in the composition of the GA next year, which could then change the composition of the BOG and begin to the reverse years of regressive policies that govern our university system. In a few years, we could have housing options that don’t discriminate against transgender and nonbinary students, as well as a state budget that will adequately fund the University, so it doesn’t need to risk students’ health by bringing them back to campus in the middle of the most deadly pandemic in a century. Our voices matter. Let’s exercise them. Go vote.
