Dear UNC Board of Governors:
I appreciate very much the interest you have shown in meeting with me after my current case against UNC Wilmington heads to court in just a few months. I also appreciate the efforts of key members of the Senate to set up such a meeting now that Republicans control the NC Senate, State General Assembly, and the Governor's mansion. When we meet in the spring, I am going to present you with a specific proposal which will help start to reform the UNC system in three important ways:
1) It will cut administrative overhead.
2) It will reduce the amount of money the DNC is funneling through the system for political purposes.
3) It will reopen debate on several key social issues that have not been debated in the UNC system for years (due to the university endorsement of one particular side of the issue).
The need to cut administrative overhead is urgent. When I became a UNC professor, here at the Wilmington campus, there was only one administrator, the provost, who made over $100,000 per year. Within 15 years, the number of six-digit salary administrators skyrocketed to 153. Many of those new administrators were put in charge of offices meant to promote diversity.
Unfortunately, in order to pay their salaries we had to increase tuition. Ironically, this meant that a lot of poor prospective students (disproportionately non-white) decided they could not afford to get a college education. The people who have truly experienced the "richness of diversity" are administrators who already have their PhDs. It is shameful hypocrisy.
My plan will address this hypocrisy and reduce administrative overhead by replacing two university offices - and two corresponding sets of administrators - with just one. Accordingly, I am proposing that each UNC campus that has both a Women's Resource Center and an LGBT Office immediately shut down both of those offices and replace it with one. The new office will be called the Center for the Study of Individual Rights, or CSIR. Before I explain what the new CSIRs will do, let me first explain why the Women's Centers and LGBT Offices need to be closed.
Many UNC Women's Centers have been operating for years as satellite political offices for the DNC. For example, the Women's Center at UNC-CH has actually been caught doing mass mailings in support of pending legislation with the use of university personnel and university computers. But most of the women's centers are a little more discreet. They simply endorse the broader positions of the DNC without actually endorsing specific legislation.
Abortion is probably the best example of this tendency. Our own Women's Resource Center at UNC-Wilmington has consistently refused to promote crisis pregnancy centers on its website even when they have been asked. But Planned Parenthood always gets space on the WRC website. In 2012, the WRC even sold "I had an abortion" tee shirts to students who aborted their children. This was at an official WRC taxpayer funded event. It's pretty obvious that this government office officially endorses abortion. Well, so much for diversity of viewpoint. The debate on abortion is over. It’s time to implement the DNC agenda.
The LGBT offices are worse, including the LGBTQIA Office here at UNC-Wilmington. By the way, the "I" is for "inter-sexed" and the "A" is for "allies." The word "allies" is the key because these people are engaged in a political war. By way of example, the UNCW office actually used state computers to send mass emails organizing a political campaign against Amendment One (which sought to ban gay marriage back in 2012). They squandered taxpayer dollars on their losing political battle during a deep state budget crisis. More importantly, they broke the law with impunity.
We don't need these offices squandering tax dollars trying to pass legislation and implement policy on behalf of special interest groups. The job of the university is to promote debate over policy. That is where my proposed CSIRs come into the picture.
The CSIRs will be cost effective because they won't do much and will only require a part time director and a part time administrative assistant - probably just a graduate assistant. The office will publish two newsletters per year. Each will contain eight essays - two opposing opinions on four controversial topics. The authors will be experts in their fields and will be drawn from universities all around the nation. The CSIRs will also host four debates per academic year. Each will focus on one important question. For the first year, I will propose debates on the following questions:
1. Is marriage an individual constitutional right?
2. How would legislation defining a "person" affect individual rights?
3. Who does affirmative action help and who does it hurt: individuals or groups?
4. What are the relative long term effects of amnesty on Hispanic, African, and Caucasian Americans?
When we talk about same sex marriage, abortion, affirmative action, and amnesty for illegals we are bound to offend a lot of students. But that is the point. These students haven't been offended in years because they haven't heard a clash of dissenting opinions in years.
The best part of this plan is that it will save the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars while replacing ideological conformity with reasoned debate. I'm currently examining the budgets of the centers I plan to close and comparing them with the budgets of my proposed CSIRs. I'll publish the detailed fiscal plan in a future column.
In the meantime, count on the Women's Center saying that my plan to shut them down will deprive students of much needed services. But what services are they talking about? I know they set up tables on campus in order to teach students how to put a condom on a cucumber. But students learn that in the public high schools, long before they get to the public university. I know they sell candy covered vagina shaped lollipops on Valentine's Day. But students learn puerile vulgarity in middle school, long before they get to the public university. To be fair, I don't know of another place where students can buy "I had an abortion" tee shirts. Even Planned Parenthood had the good sense to stop doing that years ago.
And count on the LGBTQIA Office to throw an even bigger hissy fit. They will insist that their orgasm awareness seminars are the intellectual climax of the semester. They'll also tout their occasional showings of controversial films – for example, "Breasts: A Documentary" - as indispensable educational services. But the university is located just three miles from Wrightsville Beach. Unlimited exposure to breasts is practically within walking distance.
College students deserve better than this. They need an educational experience that is less expensive, less politicized, and less one-sided than the one they are getting in the UNC system. I'm not saying each individual has a right to a first-class education. But I do think the question is worthy of debate.