Some students say they were kept out of meeting

Students from the UNC-Chapel Hill group TransparUNCy, which is dedicated to shining a light on political connections in North Carolina higher education, attempted to attend the meeting in-person. They told The N&O they were kept out of the UNC School of the Arts building, where the meeting was held, after being told by UNC System security that the meeting room was full.

System spokesperson Andy Wallace told The N&O that some members of the public were unable to enter the meeting room because of a lack of available seats and because the open-session portion of the meeting, in which the vote took place, lasted for such a short time — roughly five minutes.

State law states that “any person is entitled to attend” open meetings. It is unclear whether exceptions are made when a room reaches its capacity. Asked by The N&O whether the room was full to a point at which a fire code or other regulations would make the room unsafe, Wallace said only that the room was full.

Alexander Denza, an organizer with the group, told The N&O before the meeting that “it’s important that the Board of Governors knows that students are watching their changes.”

“These changes that they’re making right now are going to have a chilling effect on speech and also (on) discourse in our communities,” which he said is ironic given UNC-Chapel Hill and the broader UNC System’s recent goals of promoting open discourse.

Denza said he is concerned about how vague the proposal’s language is, which he said could mean that the policy’s impacts might vary from campus to campus and allow administrators the ability to “work the language in the ways that best fits their agenda or situation.”

Samuel Scarborough, another UNC student who is a member of the group, said the group wanted to attend the meeting “to make our voices heard.”

“Knowing that, institutionally, we don’t have as much power as we wish we had, we want to at least be present in the room as these decisions are happening and have a chance to speak,” Scarborough said. “We were not given this opportunity.”

Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, issued a statement on the board vote, saying:

“Our diversity should be used to highlight our state’s strengths, not our political divisions. Republican legislative and university leaders who attack diversity at our public universities are failing in their duty to protect students while threatening our ability to recruit top scientists, researchers and innovators who power our economy.”

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