To the Editor:
Peter Hans, the UNC system president who recently appointed Lee Roberts as permanent chancellor, just used your journalistic platform as a public-relations tactic to further obscure a nontransparent and unjust search process (“Why an Outsider Is the Right Choice to Be UNC’s Chancellor,” The Chronicle Review, August 13).
But we welcome the opportunity to expose his claims.
Hans argues against judging a chancellor by his “nontraditional” background, given the position’s complex demands. What he does not admit is that students, faculty, and staff — or anyone not named Peter Hans — did not get the chance to judge him at all.
The entire search process has created the illusion of constituent input.
As students at UNC-Chapel Hill, we responded to Roberts’s interim appointment in December with every possible attempt to enable our voice in the subsequent search process. We published op-eds and held teach-ins to raise student awareness of the conservative takeover of the UNC system.
We encouraged students to attend search committee-scheduled listening sessions — which most of the committee found excuses to miss. Supported by 500 signatures, we organized our own forum, to zero committee attendance. The committee then abruptly canceled the fall listening sessions that they promised students, before readily confirming Roberts.
All this happened while the UNC system and Roberts dismantled other student-centered, time-honored institutions: DEI, our 165-year-old social-activism hub, and the 100-year-old honor court.
Peter Hans: In denying constituent input, you denied Lee Roberts the chance to advocate for his purported qualifications. In doing so, you refuted your own argument more than we ever have. Questions of fairness and transparency will intensify because of your errant decision making, the latest example of which is this op-ed — which speaks not to your disaffected constituents, but to your fellow higher-ed administrators.
In college, we learn to embrace a difference in preferences. But more importantly, we learn to call out and condemn a difference in standards that justify any coronation. For any chancellor to earn UNC’s recognition, as you so idealize in your piece, you must recognize us first.
Andrew Sun
Student
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Alexander Denza
Student
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Samuel Scarborough
Student
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
