A bill recently proposed in North Carolina’s Senate would prevent lobbyists from joining the UNC System’s Board of Governors (BOG), which sets overarching policy for all universities in the system. Prohibiting lobbyists — people employed by an organization to sway legislation in that organization’s interest — from holding a leadership position in government simply makes sense, as it creates a clear conflict of interest.
However, as the bill is written, it doesn’t entirely resolve the problems at the core of the BOG, which has a history of ignoring students’ best interests and rolling over to satisfy the political whims of the state legislature. While the three lobbyists currently on the 24-member board may play some role in this, the primary issue is that appointees are often close allies of political leaders in the state legislature, rather than independent experts who can push back against excessive moves by legislators. This bill is certainly an important move, but broader action is needed to insulate the BOG from the legislature and ensure its ability to defend student interests.
One option may be to revise how board members are appointed. North Carolina’s Board of Education, which governs the public school system, consists of three elected officials from the Council of State, namely the superintendent, lieutenant governor and treasurer, as well as 11 other members appointed by the governor and approved by the legislature. Allowing the governor to have some say in who sits on the BOG could reduce the extent to which befriending the majority leader is a prerequisite for being chosen.
The BOG currently hosts just one nonvoting student member, the president of the UNC Association of Student Governments. Letting more student officials attend these meetings could allow more student issues to be addressed. Potentially granting the student representative a vote would dramatically increase students’ ability to promote our interests to the board, but wouldn’t overturn the purpose of the board as the voice of taxpayers over the institutions they fund.
Perhaps more realistically, the legislature could create a bipartisan commission to nominate new members of the BOG, which would prevent the institution from falling into a partisan camp depending on who controls the state legislature, ensuring greater continuity and reducing the chance of political gamesmanship. With universities serving as a hotbed of social discussion, from historical roles in the civil rights movement to modern debates over campus speakers and ridiculous claims of “indoctrination,” it is completely inappropriate for a blatantly partisan entity to set the rules of engagement.
The state government certainly has the prerogative to govern a public institution, but the board should serve as a bridge between the General Assembly and students, not a hammer held over our heads. Whatever form revisions to the board take, they must be a great deal more substantial than the current proposal, which seemingly allows lobbyists to simply quit their jobs ahead of nomination and rejoin once their time is up. Students deserve much better than what the current BOG provides, and legislators who truly want our universities to thrive should jump at the chance to insulate them from damaging and unrelated political ploys of the hour.
