The UNC Board of Governors made a mess of firing UNC President Tom Ross. Clearly, it was amateur hour. Board Chair John Fennebresque met with the press without any answers to the most obvious questions. He couldn’t give any reason that the Board dismissed Ross.
Then, he lied. He told reporters that politics had nothing to do with it. Everyone in the room knew that politics had everything to do with it. As one Republican said to me, “Why couldn’t they just say, ‘As long as Ross is system president, it will be hard to gain support for UNC at the General Assembly’ and move on?” Maybe it wouldn’t have put the matter to rest, but candor is almost always better than lying.
The whole episode has damaged the reputation of the Board of Governors and created at atmosphere of distrust at the colleges and universities in the system. At a UNC-CH faculty meeting, professors were angry at the Board and fearful for the future. One professor called it “a kind of anger or undirected sense of crisis.”
And they are right to be scared. The Republicans in the General Assembly have shown little restraint when it comes to heavy-handed governing. They’ve run over local governments by redistricting school board and county commission seats to favor Republicans. They’ve tried to take over airports and water systems. They’re Big Government Conservatives with an authoritarian, anti-democratic bent.
It’s time for the Republicans in the legislature to reel it in and start instilling confidence instead of fear. They perpetually criticize Democrats for causing uncertainty in the market that restricts growth and hiring. Well, uncertainty in the public sector has a similar adverse effect. We lose our best teachers and employees to other states where they have more confidence in their future. We lose the best young applicants because nobody wants to start their career in the midst of turmoil and change.
Republicans have had their time of pillage and plunder. Now, they need to govern. The Board of Governors should come clean and own up to their actions. It might not make everyone happy, but it will at least begin to restore some sense of trust.
But it’s really up to Phil Berger and Tim Moore. Right now, they need to show some leadership. They need to restrain their members, instill more transparency, and stop partisan power grabs. Teachers, professors, and state employees need some assurance that Republicans want more than just control. Berger and Moore need to show that they can make things work, not just tear things down.
Photo courtesy of Kirk Ross and The Carolina Mercury. Follow them at @ludkmr and @NCMercury.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
It’s been my sad experience that we’ll be waiting a long time for some in the GOP to govern….that would mean some of them would have to grow up…a lot…..and that another bunch would have to give up their dreams of a new feudal state where they can rule without impediment…..
Y’all are so cute, thinking that the Republicans in the General Assembly give a rat’s ass about public higher education … or government for the public good in general. Folks, the barbarians are inside the gates. They’re not going to be reasoned with, so don’t even try.
Lex. I’m afraid you are correct. They don’t care about public higher ed (or about public K-12 ed, for that matter). On K-12, they prefer the exclusivity that charter schools and private vouchers encourage, and on higher ed, they want to cut it and micro-manage it to fit their political agenda. I’m thinking that the petition to the BoG by UNC-CH faculty (to restore Ross to office) was perhaps the most ignored communication ever.
Only a switch in the majority in the General Assembly will foster change from the current course, and I don’t see that coming for at least 5 years, and likely not in time to avoid a second dose of Republican-gerrymandered redistricting in 2011.
It just came to me, YOU Progressive Wing are RedHotPoker.
not hardly! you’d be wrong! I would NEVER call myself an evil ‘progressive’, because ‘progressivism’ is a FAILED concept, first failing by 1920s, but the ‘crackkks still like to use that silly word like it means something applicable…it’s nonsense.
Carolina Girl: Amen to your post. And you are right about some posters needing to chill Calling the UNC BoG “wealthy liberal elitists,” calling Democrats “democrackks, and besmirching the integrity or education of other posters shows that some dispassion and a “time-out” is needed.
Some of you need to chill out for a few days. And once you have chilled try looking for the actual facts. To call the BOG a bunch of “liberal elitist” has no basis in facts. They are certainly not “liberal”.
Yes, elections to have consequences. However, wait until the tuition at state universities go through the roof, when it takes a student 6 to 8 years to get an undergraduate degree because they cannot get the classes they need, and when they start shuttering some universities and the local communities rise up. Then there will be consequences.
Yes, there was a scandal at UNC-CH. Yes, Tom Ross came on about the time the scandal was first being detected. Does that mean he is responsible for the scandal?
Tom Ross has been a very good leader of the UNC system. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what is going on here.
When the BOG and the General Assembly tear down the education system from kindergarten through the university system you can bet there will be consequences. Unfortunately the consequences will be great and will will take many years to repair. Bill Friday is probably rolling in his grave.
Stop with the “tear down” nonsense, please. You’re not helping your argument and it’s make you appear a little crazy, and I don’t believe you are (at least not at this stage).
True Ross came aboard about the time the scandal broke, but as I have said repeatedly, he handled it wrong. There has been a steady drip, drip, drip of this revelation or that impropriety since this all first came to light. The question is what would a competent leader do? First find out what happened and who is responsible, and since the buck stops with Holden Thorp, he would be the first to go. You don’t want the guilty hanging around influencing the investigation and if he didn’t know he should have known…so he’s out immediately.
But the LAST thing one wants in a scandal is a steady stream of information coming out for months, or in this case years. You want it all exposed at once, a plan put forth that addresses the problem in the mind of the public, and clear indications that the plan is being enacted. THAT is how one restores confidence in the system. But Ross did none of this, in fact he tried to run out the clock.
So regardless of how good he was or wasn’t, he through his efforts of trying to protect the University has done untold damage. You may disagree, time will tell. But we’re either going to have a well run honest school or we’re going to have SMU in the ’80s. What’s it gonna be?
But we all know Ross’s firing had little if anything to do with the scandal. He’s a Democrat, the Governor and Legislature is Republican and there are a lot of Republicans who went to Carolina. They just want their own guy/gal in. Anything wrong with that?
“RALEIGH, NC– The state Senate is considering a provision in its budget for next year to study closing Elizabeth City State University.
The provision in the $21 billion senate budget would look into the impact of closing under performing schools that have a 20 percent drop in enrollment over four years.
Jordan Hennessy, a spokesperson for Senator Bill Cook who represents Elizabeth City, says the provision specifically targets ECSU.
From 2010 to 2013, ECSU has seen a 33 percent drop in student enrollment, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Education and ECSU.
Supporters say the feasibility study would ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely at state schools.
‘This is an actual study that will see what is the future what would be the best for the Elizabeth City State University and also on top of the study we’ll be studying what would be the effects if there was a need to close the school and how that would affect the community,’ said Hennessy.
A spokeswoman for ECSU told 13News Now the school did not have a prepared statement immediately available.
If the provision passes, the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina School System will deliver the report to the General Assembly in 2015.”
That can be found at: http://www.13newsnow.com/story/news/2014/09/10/14868736/
I don’t think that’s nonsense, bub.
But, Troy, it’s JUST an HBC (historically black college) that’s in a poorer eastern county. Why should it stay open, especially when they can use the cover of a ROI/economic argument to shut it down, and can just plain ignore the fact that the Great Recession/high unemployment happened at the same time their enrollment dropped??
I hope you get my sarcasm……
I do indeed. I attended law school for a time at a HBCU. Those schools have an excellent tradition all their own and do just as much or more educating students as the flagship schools of the University system. They however don’t get the recognition they deserve for it.
Finally, some accountability for the most corrupt public university in the country (probably)!
Cheater Hill is a disgrace to the taxpayers of NC, and their BLOATED roster of outrageously paid staffers, yes the medical crowd too, is ridiculous! (think Gene Nichol and wife!) WE the people have become increasingly annoyed with the whole UNC control and waste of our money in NC! The UNC BOG are pretty much ALL wealthy liberal elitists who wish to control.
Elections have consequences, and after 140+ years of total democrackkk desecration the refreshing corrections are pleasing the VOTERS !!! The NC democrackkk party is a criminal organization disguised as a political party. Nothing more, nothing less. Even the merely registered ‘crackkk is a criminal by association. STRIVE to be SMARTER than they WANT you to BE…
“Republicans have had their time of pillage and plunder. Now, they need to govern. The Board of Governors should come clean and own up to their actions.”
The BOG made the decision to lie about the reasons why they fired Ross. They will not recant and come forward with the truth now.
The voters of NC just sent a bunch of people who COULD NOT BE CLEARER on where they stand on education – they want to dismantle it – from K – higher ed. NCGOP officials ARE governing – in ways that will cost NC very dearly. But voters don’t seem to care.
(STILL can’t believe Thom Tillis is NC’s junior senator!!)
FYI to those who think Ross was fired due to UNC academic fraud scandal – the “shadow curriculum” ended in 2011 – the year Ross came on board as UNC-system president. He’s had to clean up a horrible, horrible mess. And quite frankly, the BOG is to blame as well for the UNC-CH debacle.
Are you people getting this? HEADS SHOULD HAVE ROLLED AT UNC FROM THE CHANCELLOR DOWN! That my leftist, doltish friends is the only way to restore credibility to the University. As I have mentioned, I am a State grad, but if I were a Carolina guy I would let it be known that they would get not one red cent from me until such time as the university punished and/or eliminated every swinging “Mick” that sullied the reputation of one of the finest public universities in the world.
Ross did not do that, and that is why he should go. By all accounts he is an outstanding individual in every way, but he has done UNC no favors on this one.
Gregorious – I think the point is not that he shouldn’t have been fired but that the BOG shouldn’t lie about WHY he was fired. There were plenty of things that they could have trotted out from the scandal at UNC to the scandal at UNCG but instead, they apparently fired him for being excellent (something they said, not something I’m saying). You are absolutely right that heads should have rolled as a result of the athletics/academics scandal. They should have rolled at UNCG too for the Paul Mason scandal too. And there are any number of other reasons why he might have been relieved of command…but instead the BOG chose to lie. And they did it because they don’t feel they owe anybody the truth. I would not fall into a dead faint (unless on diet pills, of course…) if someone were to tell me that politics has been involved in the appointments of BOG members and systems presidents not just this time but every other time as well. In fact, I most likely wouldn’t trust anybody who told me the opposite. If there is nothing shameful, however, about making such a change in the presidency as a result of a conflict of views, then why lie about it? It’s not really about Ross, it’s about the process and boorish, ineffective way in which it was presented.
Sorry, Thomas, but I’m with cosmicjanitor on this. Yes, the GOP needs to start leading in positive fashion instead of regressing, but I truly don’t think they know how or even want to. They got to the majority by relying on saying “NO!” to a lot, by appealing to people’s fears, and by generating class divisiveness and warfare not only within the middle-class, but also between middle and lower earners. They are still driven by their need to tear down everything that NC had gained in its decades-long progressive enlightenment. Changing/re-directing, in partisan mindset, how and what our great public university system teaches and explores is just another goal for them.
Yes, Robbie, agreed. Those who try to make the Ross firing about –or justify it on– the UNC athletic scandal tend to be spiteful athletic boosters who likely know nothing about universities or their leadership needs.
To fire Ross with no reason given (but insisting that it was not political nor age or performance-driven) was the height of ill-preparedness. And for the BoG chair to go further by saying he and board hadn’t even considered what attributes the next leader shouldpossess only unscores how rash the decision was.
Well that’s just an asinine statement, but not unexpected from the likes of you. What do you know about our history “Mick”, or our university system? You were once an employee, not a professor mind you, an EMPLOYEE of NC State (Lord knows who hired you!). You went to SUNY for Pete’s sake!
However, for your information this athletic scandal is not an athletic scandal, it’s an ACADEMIC SCANDAL involving athletes. This is NOT a State/Carolina sports rivalry issue and for you to suggest that it is reveals a, well, typically SUNY caliber intellect.
Collo-Rosso:
Why are you attacking a poster for calling it an “athletic scandal”? You yourself called it that on this thread (see your quote: “Ross was not the man for the job and I base that on his incompetent ‘handling’ of the UNC athletic scandal”).
And your verbal assaults against Mr. Mills (“…he’s on the diet pills”) and other posters seems obsessive and downright mean-spirited. Give it a rest.
It is both an athletic and academic scandal, but some here have suggested it’s some form of school rivalry thing, and that’s just nonsense. As a citizen (born and raised) of this great State, UNC is MY school too and my criticism has nothing whatever to do with on the field competition. My hope is that UNC survives and thrives, including their once exemplary athletic programs.
UNC has been their own worst enemy in this whole debacle. I know they’re trying to protect their basketball brand, I get that. But this ‘circle the wagons’ mentality ain’t working.
I apologize if my admittedly dark sense of humor offends you, but believe me when I say, I have nothing but the highest regard for the author. I just thought his post was a tad hyperbolic and humor is often times an excellent way to make a point.
Gregorious: Well, it’s just that you’ve been very confusing on this thread. You first say it’s an athletic scandal, then you attack a poster for calling it just that, then you say it “is not an athletic scandal, it’s an ACADEMIC SCANDAL….” and now your saying “It is both an athletic and academic scandal.” It would help if you made up your mind.
And I have no problem with humor, even the dark sort, and I love a good penned laugh or pun. But your attempts, IMO, frequently fail to be funny, or appear to carry a personal or political vendetta, or are quite insulting of other posters. It can detract from a solid to-and-fro on issues. But, nevertheless, apology accepted; big of you to offer that…..
Progressive Wing I will try one more time so please, try to read carefully. The UNC scandal is both an athletic and academic scandal, in my view. I said it was not an athletic scandal in the context of the post by the ever affable “Mick”. “Those who try to make the Ross firing about –or justify it on– the UNC athletic scandal tend to be spiteful athletic boosters…” This would clearly suggest that criticism of UNC (or Tom Ross) by someone who may have gone to a rival school (athletically speaking) was basing their criticism on the fact they went to a rival school. This is certainly not the basis for MY criticism of Tom Ross or the UNC scandal however you may term it.
I hope that’s clear enough for you because I’m not sure I can explain it any better.
Reinstate Ross. Point made, now repair the damage, or suffer the consequences.
I know it’s January and time to lose that holiday weight, but the author really should check his posts when he’s on the diet pills.
So what if the firing was “handled” badly? It is what it is. Ross was not the man for the job and I base that on his incompetent “handling” of the UNC athletic scandal. There was swifter and more severe sanctions imposed on NC State for a few basketball players selling tickets than there has been at UNC for systemic academic fraud! Where was Ross in all this? Why doing everything possible to sweep it all under the rug.
Look, I’m a State guy, but UNC is (was) a fine institution we could all be proud of. The name meant something across the country and around the world. That has been lost, now it means something entirely different. Giving disgraced UNC Athletic Director Baddour a pass and a pension was appallingly bad judgement…and THAT’S the reason I would have given in the press conference!
You think the fact that UNC has yet to suffer the kind of consequences that State did, while simultaneously instituting UNC and system-wide changes to eliminate any possibility of similar future occurrences, means Tom Ross has done a poor job?
Yes, you ARE a State guy, with apparently no concept of what good leadership means and does.
I guess accountability doesn’t figure into your reckoning and I’m certain honor and integrity don’t.
Mr. Beck has the more reasonable viewpoint. Collo-Rosso, have you not heard of the Wainstein Report? Did you not realize that UNC commissioned that report? The NCAA did not. UNC did that. UNC dug into what was there in order to correct the problem. UNC did not “do everything possible to sweep it all under the rug.” UNC figured out what went wrong then took measures to prevent the same thing happening in the future.
The NCAA started their investigation of UNC in the summer of 2010; four and one half years ago. What’s the bet it takes another 4+ years (or at least until Roy retires) until we get a resolution?
By the way, I’m thinking you didn’t go to law school at Duke.
All excellent points in this op-ed, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on this one Thomas, things are going to get a lot worse unless the people rise-up and start demanding accountability – especially where vote tabulation is concerned!
#MoreNormal