By Emily Bruzzo, News Editor

Published in print Mar. 17, 2015

Members of UNCG’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has issued a statement vocalizing their concerns and frustrations about the UNC Board of Governors’ (BoG) decision to discontinue UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity.

The signing members— consisting of 18 faculty members, many of which are faculty senators— have deemed protesting NC Student Power Union members “heroes” and argue that the board’s decision “violates the fundamental tenets of academic freedom and shared governance that are the cornerstones of higher education in the United States.”

According to the faculty members, the board— which they argue is made up of 32 “business leaders, lawyers and executives” who are “overwhelmingly white, male, wealthy and conservative”— failed to facilitate the sort of dialogue UNC system faculties and students deserve.

The angry faculty members said that the board’s “communications proceeded by way of assertion without regard for the rules of logic and reason.”

“There is a profound disconnect,” they continued, “between academic discourse and BoG oversight. We faculty keep thinking that our highest leaders will listen to reason. But it seems not in their interests, experience or inclination to do so.”

They concluded the letter by positing that as academics that may want to fight what they consider to be the board’s missteps and fallacies of logic, but that they cannot because “there are currently no structures in place by which [they] can insure the founding principle of shared governance, namely that faculty play a central role in all decisions concerning curricular matters.”

UNCG-AAUP’s full statement can be found on The Carolinian’s website.