Drop-add petition gains 5,000 in 24 hours

CORRECTION: Due to a reporting error, a previous version of this story said members of Student Congress would collect petition signatures in the Pit next week, but the event is organized by the UNC Executive Branch. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error.

In just 24 hours, more than 5,000 UNC-CH students, faculty and alumni signed an online petition against the UNC system’s recently shortened drop-add period.

Student Body Vice President Jacob Morse, who created the petition with Student Body President Christy Lambden, said the response has exceeded expectations.

“It kind of caught on fire,” he said.

In April, the UNC Board of Governors passed a new policy that shortens the UNC system’s drop-add period from eight weeks to 10 days. Advocates of the policy say it will make classrooms more efficient.

“The goal is to make sure that campuses are paying close attention to many factors that could unnecessarily prolong the amount of time it takes a student to complete a degree,” said Joan Lorden, chairwoman of the Academics First Workgroup, which created the new systemwide policy, and an administrator at UNC-Charlotte.

Morse said he and Lambden were inspired to action when they noticed the social media buzz around The Daily Tar Heel’s Tuesday article about UNC-CH administration’s criticism of the new drop-add policy.

“We just wanted to give students a chance to quickly make their voice heard,” Morse said.

Junior journalism major Manoj Mirchandani, who signed the petition after seeing it on Twitter, said a long drop-add period is essential to a liberal arts university.

“It’s given me the opportunity to experience and embrace classes that I probably wouldn’t take in my current major,” he said.

Junior Grace Lempp said she signed the petition in part because she thinks the drop-add policy should not be systemwide.

“I don’t think that every UNC-system school can be held to the same academic standard,” she said.

Morse said representatives from the UNC Executive Branch plan to stand in the Pit next week to raise awareness for the issue and to solicit more petition signatures. He said he wants to collect as many signatures as possible before presenting it to the UNC Board of Governors.

“There’s incredible power in numbers,” he said.

Morse said he believes it’s possible to convince the board to vote to keep the new policy from being implemented at UNC-CH — but his vision doesn’t stop there.

“In the long run, my hope and my goal is for this policy to be overturned, period.”

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