The process of hiring Margaret Spellings for UNC-system president was riddled with secrecy and larger unresponsive to community demands for transparency. This editorial board, in addition to other student activists and organizations, repeatedly demanded the Board of Governors open up the processes in which they chose Spellings.
So it came as a surprise when Spellings oversaw the institution of measures such as livestreaming board meetings and adding opportunities for public comment. These are steps in the right direction, and she deserves credit for overseeing the changes.
But activists from the Board of Governors Democracy Coalition and other groups deserve the most credit for forcing these accomplishments. Demands for a public comment period at board meetings have been a part of the coalition’s agenda since its creation in 2014.
Ultimately removing the veil the Board of Governors has previously hidden behind will allow students, faculty and taxpayers to better hold the board accountable.
Spellings also surprised us when she listened to faculty and student concerns about the N.C. Guaranteed Admissions Program, which would decrease minority and low-income enrollment in UNC system schools — more specifically the historically black colleges and universities within the system.
Spellings has advocated for a delay in the implementation of NCGAP. We appreciate this move, but we’d like to hear her address why the initiative should not be repealed entirely. If it’s not good for our public HBCUs one year, why would it be the next year?
Nonetheless, we appreciate Spellings’ move on this issue. But again, without the activists who worked to make issues affecting North Carolina’s HBCUs visible, it would be impossible to know if she would have made this choice. Before observers again slam the tactics of activists working to make UNC system issues visible, they should ask what may have happened if there was no spotlight on the UNC system at all.
Rest assured, we still remain vigilant and skeptical of Spellings’ goals and thoughts on this future of UNC, but we would be abdicating our commitments to fairness if we did not voice our agreement with her recent actions. We are still concerned about her past homophobic remarks, her tendency to call students customers and her overall record of supporting private, for-profit education.
Spellings still has a lot on her agenda, and we earnestly hope she surprises us like she has done in her first few weeks.
