"Real dialogue" at university commission listening session

In its fifth public listening session Tuesday, the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina had a surprise guest: Marty Kotis, 8 year veteran of the UNC Board of Governors and current member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.

The sessions, which the commission has been holding since February, have mostly drawn sparse crowds and had, until this week, featured no real back-and-forth with currently serving trustees or board members. Tuesday afternoon’s session, held at Guilford Technical Community College in Kotis’ hometown of Greensboro, was a little different.

“I just thought I would go and listen, I didn’t plan on speaking,” Kotis told NC Newsline after the session. “But I think it was good to have some real dialogue and to hear some of the ideas. There were some good ones.”

The commission, created by Gov. Roy Cooper’s executive order late last year, faces some serious obstacles to making changes in the way the UNC System is governed. Cooper, a Democrat, doesn’t have the power to make those changes himself. The General Assembly’s Republican majority, whose political appointees make up the Board of Governors and individual campus board of trustees, has been clear they aren’t interested in any changes.

The commission is bi-partisan, co-chaired by former UNC Presidents Tom Ross and Margaret Spellings, a prominent Democrat and Republican respectively. It includes current Republican members of the board of governors, former members of both parties and former and current GOP lawmakers. But its work has largely been dismissed by Republicans.

Kotis, a Republican who has for years shown a penchant for bucking his own party and fellow board members and trustees when he disagrees, was an interesting and unexpected addition to the most recent listening session. His presence led to a lengthy and civil conversation with commission members as well as students and faculty – current and retired – from nearby UNC-Greensboro.

Kotis agreed with the audience members on the appointment process being political, but said that’s in its nature.

“Obviously, it’s difficult to get the politics out of politics,” Kotis told the commission members.

That’s as true now as it was more than a decade ago, Kotis said, when Democrats were in the majority and in charge of the inherently political process of appointing members to the system’s governing board and trustees.

As commission members discussed, the process has become more partisan since then. Republicans stripped the governor’s office of appointments on campus trustee boards as soon as he defeated Republican Pat McCrory and purged the system’s top governing board of registered Democrats altogether for several years.

Sen. Gladys Robinson, one of four commission members at the listening session and a former member of the board of governors herself, asked Kotis how he thought concerns about a lack of racial, ethnic, gender and even geographic diversity on the board and among trustees should be addressed.

Kotis reiterated his opposition to “quotas” for boards, or recruiting members specifically to achieve a diversity goal. But he allowed the boards may naturally become more diverse if appointees were drawn from a larger pool of those willing to serve.

“I think recruiting, leadership programs, things like that are a good way to do it,” Kotis said, pointing to the city of Greensboro’s City Academy, which takes city residents through various parts of how the city works, as a good example of creating a “pipeline” of interested and informed people who sometimes go on to be city leaders.

Something like that could be replicated for the UNC System to bring in people who are interested in serving as trustees or board members he said. Even current board members and trustees could use something of that type, Kotis said.

“The orientation we receive now is like Driver’s Ed,” he said. “But just the written portion.”

Dr. Anne Parsons, an associate professor and Director of Public History at UNCG, said politics makes real change in terms of diversity difficult.

“I don’t think the political will right now is in diversifying the board of governors,” Parsons said.

That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be other important reforms, she said.

Voices of faculty, voices of students

More transparency at both the board of governors and trustee level would be a good place to start, Parsons said.

While the board of governors currently livestreams its committee and full board meetings, not all trustee boards do. Even those who want to attend meetings and can make the scheduled time sometimes find there isn’t room for everyone from the public who would like to attend in person, she said.

Kotis seized on that suggestion too, saying it was something he’d discussed with his fellow UNC-Chapel Hill trustees. As of Tuesday night, he said he had gotten support from some of the board leadership for the idea of live streaming meetings even if it needed to be done with his own equipment.

“If you really want to increase transparency, you could record the closed sessions too,” Kotis said. “I believe we used to do that. Some things you can’t have in open session, but at least that way there’s a record.”

Those recordings were audio-only so full notes could be kept rather than live-streamed or video taped.

Dr. Susan Dennison, an emeritus professor at UNCG and former president of the campus’ association of retired faculty, said the commission should also address how few people with actual experience in higher education now serve on the system’s governing board or among the trustees.

“Those voices are important,” Dennison said.

System policy prohibits current faculty from serving on those boards to prohibit conflicts of interest, but Dennison suggested retired faculty would be an excellent way to get those voices onto the boards.

“I talk all the time to retired faculty who say, ‘I have a lot of knowledge and experience, I still have a lot to offer,’” Dennison said.

Kotis said he thought that was one of the better ideas he heard at the session and that a database of former faculty and their experience and skills could be a good resource for future appointments.

Ross, the former UNC System president, agreed, saying how appointees are chosen needs a deeper look in general.

“On every other board I’ve served on, there’s a matrix of skills we look for,” Ross said.

Daniel Bayer, a graduate student at UNCG, told the commission the voices of grad students are often left off of boards as well. While elected undergraduate student leaders have seats on the board of governors and trustee boards, graduate students only occasionally get to address the board and are not often meaningful parts of discussion.

“Right now, in discussions on our campus, it definitely doesn’t feel like our voices are being heard,” Bayer said.

That’s another issue worth addressing, Kotis said. On UNC-Chapel Hill’s trustee board, where Kotis now serves, the student body president has ceded time to allow a representative of the graduate students to address the board at meetings. That doesn’t give them a vote, but has created more dialogue on and exposure for graduate student issues.

“That’s something that could be done at other schools, and I think it’s something worth discussing in general,” Kotis said.

The commission is charged with delivering its findings to Cooper’s office in by June.

Its last public listening session will be held April 11 at Durham Technical Community College.