Opinion: Funds should go to bettering UNC, not to public relations

UNC paid $12,500 to have Clarence Page, a person with no significant ties to this university, moderate a town hall about racism on campus for one night.

For context, UNC paid some lecturers less than that amount for all of 2014-15.

It’s true UNC needed to show the demonstrators who stood with students at the University of Missouri a few weeks ago that it was taking the problems of racism here at UNC seriously. Providing a town hall to amplify the voices of marginalized students was a good first step.

Hiring a big name with no real understanding of UNC’s history and climate was not. It is the ultimate example of valuing style over substance — and then not even carrying out its own plans gracefully.

This wouldn’t be such an objectionable error if UNC hadn’t spent so wastefully. A bad moderator choice can be forgiven. A gross misallocation of scarce funds is less easy to forgive.

Now, the University is a large, complex organization, and in the grand scheme of things, $12,500, while certainly not an insignificant amount of money, is a mere drop in the bucket for an institution of UNC’s size.

If the University had utilized greater frugality and wisdom in choosing a moderator, it wouldn’t have shored up any other worthy policy priority at UNC to a significant degree.

But this egregious waste is emblematic of a bloated, useless media strategy predicated on avoiding tough, necessary discussions.

The news comes on the heels of a blistering critique of Chancellor Carol Folt’s leadership by Gene Nichol, the former director of UNC’s now-eliminated Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.

Nichol rightly pointed out that the defense that public money and tuition don’t go toward UNC’s propaganda strategy isn’t much of a defense at all.

People give money to UNC’s private foundation because they believe in UNC as an educational research institution with integrity.

Hiring armies of lawyers and public relations consultants to the tune of millions of dollars is a shameful waste. Especially when perfectly legitimate alternatives are available internally.

Nichol’s analysis perhaps placed too much blame at the feet of Chancellor Folt — she is operating in a fraught political context where she has to navigate relationships with political figures who don’t understand UNC’s core values and role.

Others are even hostile to it.

Indeed, it is wise to understand the actions of Folt and her administration in a political context. Anybody expecting a better leader for UNC under this current Board of Governors and state government may be kidding themselves.

Still, it is important to hold UNC’s leaders accountable for its wasteful, misdirecting communications strategy — one seemingly designed to obfuscate, not illuminate.

That’s not what this university exists for, and a truly sound long-term image strategy would be to engage with the greatest moral crises facing the University head on, not attempting to pacify concerns with splashy announcements.