TO THE EDITOR:
Last winter, video of my discussion with North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis over Amendment One went viral.
I wish I had recorded the whole meeting. If I had, I would have captured an assertion about his position on higher education that, given Chancellor Holden Thorp’s departure, should alarm all who care for our “University of the people.”
Smiling and leaning back in his chair, he spoke of his “dream” to “fire all the chancellors and replace them with general managers.”
Tillis holds the purse strings for state funding, and he and his allies, like Art Pope, have just been appointed to the “blue-ribbon panel” on the future of the UNC system.
Start asking questions and encouraging local media to do the same.
It’s up to us as students, alumni and community members to lead the defense of this University.
Make no mistake about it: We will lose UNC as we know it if we don’t.
Jeff DeLuca ’12
Chapel Hill
