The Board of Trustees at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill voted in May of 2024 to remove the funding for the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) department and to transfer that funding to the campus police force instead. The amount of funding cut from the DEI department and transferred to the police is $2.3 million. It remains to be seen if the Board of Governers will accept the policy recommendation and follow the board’s vote.
That decision, North Carolina Public Radio reported, came on Monday, May 13. During the special Board of Trustees meeting, the trustees discussed the problems with DEI programs generally and determined that the thing to do would be to cut the DEI department.
During the meeting, the Board of Trustees’ vice chair of the budget and finance committee, called DEI programs generally “discriminatory and divisive.” Continuing, he said, “I think that DEI in a lot of people’s minds is divisiveness, exclusion and indoctrination.” He added, “We need more unity and togetherness, more dialogue, more diversity of thought.”
Further, Kotis, along with others on the board, said that it is important for the university to have the necessary degree of funding for public safety units that can protect the campus and its students from groups that, like the pro-Palestine protesters across the country, aim to cause chaos and “disrupt the university’s operations.”
Kotis added, “When you destroy property or you take down the U.S flag and you have to put up gates around it — that costs money. It’s imperative that we have the proper resources for law enforcement to protect the campus.”
Another board member, David Boliek, the chairman of the budget and finance committee, spoke about slashing the DEI department in the context of administrative bloat, telling the Raleigh News & Observer, “My personal opinion is that there’s administrative bloat in the university. Any cuts in administration and diverting of dollars to rubber-meets-the-road efforts like public safety and teaching is important.”
Mr. Boliek also spoke about supporting the campus police, saying, “It is a shame that the town of Chapel Hill refuses to aid our local university police when called upon.” He added, “The $2.3 million would be an added help to what is probably a budget issue with respect to how much we’re having to spend on law enforcement right now.”
It remains to be seen if the budget amendment will be approved by the Board of Governors, but it seems likely that they will. For one, Kotis noted that the trustees have the “power of the purse,” saying, “While we may be an advisory board, we do have the power of the purse. And if we don’t want to approve programs that aren’t in compliance with our (non-discrimination) resolution, then we don’t have to.” Further, a committee in the UNC Board of Governors last month voted to revoke a policy mandating DEI offices at all North Carolina public universities, with the full Board of Governors to vote on that policy change in late May 2024.
Featured image credit: By Yeungb – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27567796
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