UNC-Chapel Hill trustees move to divert DEI funds to police and public safety
The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees voted to divert millions of dollars spent on diversity, equity and inclusion programs into public safety instead, ahead of an expected policy change statewide to restrict DEI.
At a special meeting Monday morning, the board unanimously moved to reallocate the $2.3 million that the university spends on DEI programs toward police and other public safety measures as part of its annual budget approval process. The university’s operating budget totaled more than $4 billion in the previous fiscal year.
Trustee Marty Kotis said law enforcement needed the money following pro-Palestinian campus protests that began last month and resulted in several arrests.
“It’s important to consider the needs of all 30,000 students, not just 100 or so that may want to disrupt the university’s operations,” he said.
The move comes as the UNC Board of Governors, which governs all public universities in the state, is expected to vote on restricting DEI programs statewide next week. The board’s governance committee already passed the policy last month, but it must be approved by the full board before taking effect.
It is unclear exactly how the BOG policy, coupled with UNC’s decision to reallocate DEI funds, will affect university employees currently working in DEI positions.
Under the UNC System’s existing policy on diversity and inclusion, all schools in the university system are required, at a minimum, to employ one senior-level administrator who is responsible for “policy development and strategic planning to promote and advance” diversity and inclusion.
Under the proposed policy, the existing mandate for those positions would be eliminated, and university chancellors would have to certify to UNC System President Peter Hans by Sept. 1 that they have made appropriate changes on their campuses to comply with the proposal. That includes reporting any “reductions in force and spending, along with changes to job titles and position descriptions undertaken as a result of implementing” the policy, and how any “savings achieved” from those actions could be “redirected to initiatives related to student success and wellbeing.”
If the BOG approves the policy, UNC System legal staff are expected soon after to provide university leaders with guidance on how it should be implemented and what steps the schools should take to comply.
Under the system’s existing diversity policy and accompanying regulation, universities are required to produce annual reports to their campus-level governing boards detailing, among other information, major diversity-related programs they sponsor and the number of employees who spend at least half of their work time on diversity efforts.
UNC’s most recent report, which covers the 2021-22 fiscal year and was obtained by The News & Observer through a public records request, shows that the university spent a little more than half of the $2.3 million on personnel expenditures, with positions ranging from a chief diversity officer, to the director of the campus LGBTQ center, to the director of rural initiatives at the university’s School of Medicine, among others.
While the BOG’s policy appears to allow for existing DEI positions to be reworked into new jobs without explicit ties to diversity, the vote to remove those funds at UNC-Chapel Hill could increase the likelihood that the positions are eliminated entirely at that campus.
UNC Chief Financial Officer Nate Knuffman previously told the university’s Board of Trustees at a March meeting that the university’s spending on diversity-related personnel was only “a small fraction of the university overall spending on personnel.”
All campuses in the UNC System submit their annual budget proposals to the BOG for approval each year. In addition to voting on the policy that would restrict DEI programs and employment positions across the university system, Knuffman said the BOG is set to review the budget proposals at its meetings next week.
