When the N.C. General Assembly’s top staffer announced plans last week to roll out sexual harassment training for state lawmakers and legislative employees, some state lawmakers hailed the move as a good first step.
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As most of our readers are aware by now, NC Policy Watch reported last week on the allegations made by several witnesses that State Rep. Duane Hall of Wake County had committed a series of inappropriate sexual advances toward women while serving in the General Assembly. All told, seven separate sources told reporter Billy Ball stories of persistent sexual innuendo and, in some instances, unwanted sexual overtures.
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Brennan Aberle sees a lot of tough stuff over the course of his workday. Working on behalf of indigent clients for the Guilford County Public Defender’s office, the 31-year old attorney averages around 200 clients at any given time, most facing mid-level felonies. Working with people facing jail time and too poor to pay for their own defense, there are a lot of casual tragedies to be observed.
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Last week the UNC Board of Governors received a report summarizing Equal Opportunity and Diversity & Inclusion services at the system’s 17 schools and whether they could be consolidated and centralized for cost savings. The short answer, according to the report: Consolidation is possible, but isn’t likely to save much money. Also, doing so could hurt the good work being done across the system to conform to federal equal opportunity rules and create more diverse and inclusive campus communities.
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Back in September, the N.C. Historical Commission put off a decision on removing three Confederate monuments from the State Capitol grounds. Instead, the commission formed a task force to study the politically fraught issue, which the North Carolina General Assembly dropped into their laps with a 2015 law that makes it more difficult to remove such statues. Next Monday at 3 p.m., that task force – the Confederate Monuments Study Committee – will have its first meeting via teleconference. The public can listen in via a livestream on the YouTube site of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.
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Last year was a tumultuous one for public higher education in North Carolina. Here are five issues to watch carefully 2018 as all signs point to the volume of the debate going nowhere but up. 1) "Silent Sam" – The fight over the Confederate monument on UNC’s Chapel Hill campus known as "Silent Sam" has been going on for decades. But in the wake of the deadly white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, VA and the toppling of a Confederate statue in Durham, the movement to remove the controversial marker picked up momentum in 2017. Departments across the Chapel Hill campus, student, faculty and staff groups, even administrators – all called for or suggested it’s time for the statue to come down.
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#1 - Opioid crisis hits Wilmington area hard; lack of public resources hinders response This summer the N.C. General Assembly passed a state budget that included about half of what was called for in the bipartisan Strengthen Opioid Misuse Prevention (STOP) Act. Shortly thereafter, I got out of Raleigh to take a long, hard look at the consequences of policy coming out of the capital on people outside the Triangle. I spent a few days in Wilmington, which by some estimates is the worst city in the nation for opioid abuse.
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225,000 - Approximate number of students enrolled at schools in the University of North Carolina system.
17 - Number of campuses in the UNC system, including 16 universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, the first public residential high school for gifted students in the United States.
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The UNC Board of Governors is holding its last meeting of 2017 Friday, where the latest of its many recent controversies is expected to come to a crescendo, even as the next is cued up. The full board is expected to vote on a controversial new speech policy that civil liberties advocates, students, staff and faculty groups worry could chill speech and discourage certain types of protest on UNC’s 17 campuses.
...Historical commission member weighs in on monuments, free speech Valerie Johnson is the Mott Distinguished Professor of Women’s Studies and Director of Africana Women’s Studies at Greensboro’s Bennett College and chair of the North Carolina African American Heritage Commission. She is also one of only two Black members of the 17-member North Carolina Historical Commission, which must approve any proposed removal, relocation, or alteration of historical monuments on state property.
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