NC Senate advances UNC board nominees despite diversity concerns
The North Carolina Senate advanced six nominees Tuesday for the UNC Board of Governors, which sets policy for the state’s university system.
Four of the nominees are current board members expected to be re-appointed. Two would be new additions: Former state Sen. Harry Brown, an Onslow County Republican, and Haywood White III, a well-known lawyer and former New Hanover County commissioner who was appointed briefly to the state Senate in 2004 to fill an unexpired term.
All six of the Senate’s nominees, chosen by the chamber’s Republican majority, are men. All but one – former state Sen. Joel Ford – is white. Diversity concerns with this board, and with the individual boards of trustees that govern the system’s 17 campuses, led Gov. Roy Cooper to appoint a bipartisan task force last year to consider an overhaul.
Sen. Gladys Robinson, D-Guilford, voiced those concerns Tuesday as the Republican slate moved through the Senate’s committee on nominations.
"There are no women on here,” Robinson said of the slate. "The majority of the students in the UNC system are women, yet the Board of Governors has very few women on it. It also does not have many minorities on it."
A report commissioned by Cooper’s study group said late last year that three of every four Board of Governors members were men. Three of four were also white, and roughly 60% of campus trustees were white, the report states.
There were only two Hispanic trustees across the entire system and, though 51% of the state is female, only UNC-Greensboro had a majority female board of trustees. All but one of N.C. State’s trustees were men, according to the report.
"This is a very diverse state,” Robinson said Tuesday. “The university system is a very diverse system. And we need to have a better representation.
"I'm not saying these [nominees] aren't good people,” Robinson said. “But there are perspectives that they cannot present, represent, because they don't understand those perspectives."
Asked for a response Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick and chairman of the nominations committee, said in a text that Robinson is a former Board of Governors member herself and that he appreciated and valued her comments.
Politically, 64% of Board of Governors members are registered Republicans. Several members are also professional lobbyists who lobby the very General Assembly that appoints them. Sen. Jim Perry, R-Lenoir, filed a bill last week that would prohibit lobbyists and their spouses from serving on the board.
Perry has filed that bill before at the statehouse, without success. He is also the lead sponsor this year for one of the Senate nominees, current board member Michael Williford.
The Senate’s six nominees will come before the full chamber Wednesday, where their election is expected. The House also has Board of Governors appointments to make this year, and a spokeswoman for Speaker of the House Tim Moore said the chamber’s appointments list will be released soon, possibly next week.
In addition to Brown, White, Ford and Williford, Senate Republicans want to reappoint Board of Governors members O. Temple Sloan III, a well-known businessman whose family once owned the country’s largest privately owned auto parts supplier, and Martin L. Holton III, the retired general counsel for Reynolds American.
