Protesters seek to reverse appointment of Margaret Spellings to run UNC system
Members of the University of North Carolina system’s Board of Governors who met in Chapel Hill on Friday morning were greeted by dozens of demonstrators protesting the recent appointment of controversial former education secretary Margaret Spellings as the next UNC president.
A handful of protesting faculty were escorted from inside the board room by police, according to a spokesman for the protesters.
The protesters — students, faculty, staff and others within the UNC community — come from a number of organizations, including the Faculty Forward Network, Scholars for North Carolina’s Future, UnKoch My Campus, the UNC Board of Governors Democracy Coalition, Greenpeace USA, Ignite NC and Progress NC.
Leaflets passed out by the protesters said they want the Spellings appointment to be rescinded and for the school’s governing body to have a transparent process to find a replacement, a reference to what many said was a secretive process in the selection of Spellings. She was tapped last October to run the system of 16 universities, with 222,000 students, and awarded a $775,000 base salary for each of five years in a contract that also gives her deferred compensation of $77,500 annually and potential performance bonuses, and use of a presidential home.
A statement released by the protesters quoted Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, a student at North Carolina Central University and Black Lives Matter activist, as saying:
“Margaret Spellings’ past with the Bush administration shows that she was never in support of Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Her ideas for college as a business will only take away from the institution of learning.”
The News Observer quoted Carla Robinson, a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill, who said Spellings was a bad choice.
“She was chosen without input from students or faculty or taxpayers, and she had shown that her values are not what we want to see in continuing education,” Robinson said.
An earlier post about Spellings’s appointment said:
The News & Observer reported in August on e-mails showing that conservatives expressed delight when the board voted on Jan. 16 to oust Ross (who earned a base salary of $600,000 in his final contract year):That day, several supportive emails and messages arrived in the inbox of board Chairman John Fennebresque. “John – this is certainly good news,” wrote U.S. Rep. George Holding, a Republican fromProtesters seek to reverse appointment of Margaret Spellings to run UNC system - The Washington Post:
