Refund the Police, UNC Trustees Say The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill redirects DEI funding to campus safety.
Universities have made big investments lately in diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, and it hasn’t bought them much except divisiveness. Now the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is putting those funds to better use. On Monday its board of trustees voted unanimously to redirect $2.3 million from school DEI programs to public safety.
Rancorous anti-Israel protests and rising antisemitism have put campus safety top of mind. Shoring up university police forces looks especially wise after some municipal police departments have declined to come to the aid of colleges that called for it. As protests escalated in Chapel Hill, UNC requested support from both the town and the state highway patrol, under Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
When state officers arrived, they acted as reinforcements while campus police struggled with an unruly crowd. The town refused to send police to help with the encampment, claiming protesters were engaged in peaceful dissent protected by the First Amendment. Yet watch the video of the angry mob that surrounded and blocked UNC Provost Chris Clemens’s car. School buildings were defaced and an American flag was torn down and replaced with a Palestinian one.
“It’s important to consider the needs of all 30,000 students, not just the 100 or so that may want to disrupt the university’s operations,” said UNC Trustee Marty Kotis. Bigger changes might also be in the offing next week, when the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, which oversees 17 institutions, will review its diversity policies.
Maybe other schools will take the same lesson. When George Washington University asked for help with encampments, it was initially rebuffed by police in Washington, D.C. The University of Chicago had to rely on its campus force to manage protesters, after Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Chicago Police Department refused to help. Students might cheer, but they shouldn’t be surprised if trustees who take the job seriously move funds to keep campus safe.
Comments are closed.
