The UNC System Racial Equity Task Force launched a series of virtual town halls for students, staff and faculty to provide feedback on racial equity at individual institutions and in the UNC System.
Feedback from the town halls, which will end Oct. 29, will be factored into the Task Force’s recommendations to the Board of Governors and UNC System Office. The Task Force will send its final report to the chairperson of the Board of Governors and the UNC System President by Dec. 16.
Timothy Ives, a UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy professor and Task Force member, said the Task Force planned the virtual town halls to provide staff, faculty and students the opportunity to share their experiences with and ideas about race and equity.
“We wanted all to know that their voices matter, and that we really needed to hear from all three groups if we were to make substantive recommendations,” Ives said.
Students, faculty and staff attended separate sessions to encourage them to speak freely, Ives said.
The town halls will add to the Task Force’s survey responses that students, faculty and staff shared in September, the UNC System Racial Equity Task Force said in an email.
Ives said in the faculty session, three areas of discussion were posed to the group. He said these were the tools the UNC System uses to assess success, the level of transparency of the tenure-track process for all faculty and the quality of recruitment and retention efforts across the entire UNC System.
In a student town hall session on Tuesday morning, students discussed their experiences with policing, micro-aggressions and mental health at their respective institutions in the UNC System.
Jo Hatcher, a student at UNC School of the Arts, said she wants her university to employ more Black faculty and faculty of color to help minority students address mental health concerns effectively.
