Word on the Street: What do you know about the new Campaign for Carolina?
The magic number is $4.25 billion for the newest University fundraising campaign announced Friday —Campaign for Carolina. This campaign aims to increase funding for student scholarships, art, science and entrepreneurship programs, as well as updating curriculum and teaching methods.
With the broad goals of the donation campaign, staff writer Suzanne Blake went around campus to see what students had to say about the efforts.
Jordan Segal
Junior anthropology and linguistics major
“I think it definitely sounds like it could be a positive thing as long as they allocate their resources correctly. I just hope that they wouldn’t use donations to continue helping people who are already thriving and instead that they make sure to allocate the money where it’s most needed.”
Perry Healy
Sophomore computer science major
“I think that’s great. It’s really important to raise money for scholarships. I think that a lot of people could really thrive in college if they were given the opportunity to go to college, so giving them scholarships, I don’t see a downside. Also, putting money into arts and sciences is great. I think that’s really good. I think that with a lot of curriculum, things change really fast so I bet that even if you haven’t updated it in the last five years, it probably is very out of date, so I think it’s awesome.”
Andrew Mathew
Sophomore economics major
“I think it’s very ambitious. $4.25 billion is a big number, and if they get it, that’s great and we get better faculty and retain the best faculty so if it happens, that’d be fantastic. Having the most modern curriculum would help make sure that our students are having the best education in the world. We’re one of the top universities, so I feel that retaining that position is important.”
Courtney Halverson
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“We’ve been talking about it a little bit in our suite, and it’s kind of interesting because it’s the ‘Carolina for All’ thing. It’s just an interesting point to bring up now especially with all the Silent Sam protests going on, and there’s a lot of people questioning if UNC is for all if there’s no action happening with Silent Sam to launch a campaign like this with this slogan ‘For All’ when a lot of people, especially minorities, are not feeling that it is for all. That’s definitely interesting, but the things that they’re aiming the money for are for all in some ways, but it’s just interesting. I’m part of a group called CAGE, which is Carolina Advocating for Gender Equity, and they’ve had some talk of it and they’re more or less disappointed with what they’re trying to do, especially in the wake of all the stuff that happened in Charlottesville.”
Eleanor Gratz
First-year undecided
“I feel that I don’t know much about the campaign currently besides the T-shirt they brought out. I’m glad that they’re raising money to improve the school. I remember at the football game they made an emphasis on what’s going towards the military veteran students, which I guess is a good program. I was kind of annoyed. They put on a lot for the alumni. Alumni hold a lot of power, and I’ve heard that a lot of them don’t want Silent Sam taken down, so to appease them this way for money but also have some alumni not want progressive change is kind of shady.”
