James Moeser
UPDATE: UNC is buying University Square and Granville Towers.
Anyone want to guess what this is about?
Representatives from UNC-Chapel Hill and the Town of Chapel Hill will
hold a joint news conference at 1 p.m. today to announce details about
a major real estate acquisition. The event will be held at the Chapel
Hill Town Hall.
The news will have "significant positive
implications" for the future of the downtown Chapel Hill business
district, UNC officials said this morning.
Graham Allison, in his classic, Essence of Decision, perfectly characterized the Horace Williams Airport situation when he wrote about governmental behavior: "No decision is made just once or for good." He also argued that "where you stand depends on where you sit."
This weekend I learned there would be a press conference today at 10 am (ie: right now) to reveal the new location of the InterFaith Council's homeless shelter. Of course, this tantalizing e-mail didn't name the location, but based on the particpants I think we have a pretty strong clue.
Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin
Foy and University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser will
be joined by Chris Moran, executive
director of the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service, Rev. Richard Edens, a
United Church of Chapel Hill pastor, and other community leaders as they
announce a new partnership to benefit the community’s homeless.
So will it be at the UCC? Carolina North? Human Services Building on Homestead? It seems certain to move away from Downtown, which I think is unfortunate
I guess we will all hear shortly.
I'm happy for Chancellor James Moeser that he looks back at his time at Carolina and sees an improvement in Town-Gown relations, as WCHL reported recently. I'll admit that the Chancellor seems to have stopped lobbing bombs at the town, which seemed to be his M.O. when he first arrived almost 8 years ago. He also seems to have developed a trusting friendship with the Mayor of Chapel Hill.
The sit-in at South Building (offices for the UNC administration) which began last Thursday has now entered its tenth day and second weekend. Seven students are currently locked-in for the weekend, under constant police guard, demanding that Chancellor Moeser join the 42 universities nationwide which have adopted the Designated Suppliers Program. The DSP is an improvement on the anti-sweatshop policies which UNC adopted in 1990 after another sit-in, and would guarantee that factories producing UNC logo apparel paid their workers a living wage, and that workers at those factories had some sort of collective organization.
Students are keeping their own blog about the sit-in at http://dsp4unc.wordpress.com, with daily video updates.
The DSP has been endorsed by 18 campus organizations, both the Chatham and Orange County democratic parties, UNC's Progressive Faculty Network, the North Carolina AFL-CIO, Black Workers for Justice, North Carolina's UE-150, and the Graduate and Professional Student Federation, among other groups.
UNC's Chancellor James Moeser is stepping down next summer. Will you miss him? Who would you pick to be the next leader of our favorite university?
Moeser, in his annual "State of the University" speech, announced his decision to relinquish the chancellor's job on June 30, 2008, the end of the academic and fiscal year. He said the decision did not signal his retirement. After a year's research leave, Moeser said he would return "with the most exalted title this University can confer on an individual - professor."
- http://www.unc.edu/chan/special
It appears he is demoting himself to professor. Isn't that a bit usual? I would have assumed you'd only leave a job that sweet for something even better.
Update: Here's a timeline of UNC Chancellors according to WIkipedia:
A few weeks ago, the Chancellor appointed yet another administrative honcho to lead UNC's efforts to build Carolina North. Gone is the language of listening and visioning that we heard about the Ken Broun committee. In the Chapel Hill News, the Chancellor is clearly taking sides calling Jack Evans a "quarterback" for Carolina North: "Moeser said Evans should be adept at reading the defense, i.e. the community leaders and residents who are wary of the massive project."
It's interesting to watch UNC cycle through it's various PR phases. First we're supposed to be buddies, acting as partners, sharing the same goals for the community, etc. But next thing you know we're on opposing teams, lobbing bombs, and trying to advance our goals at any cost.
People keep e-mailing me about it, so I might as well blog it: on Friday the Chancellor of UNC wrote a letter to local elected officials pledging to not pursue the 17,000 parking spaces that were previously proposed for Carolina North, and to cooperate with the regional transit study in which UNC was already supposed to be a partner.
Coverage from WCHL (with audio clips, cool!), Chapel Hill Herald, and a mention in the News & Observer (scroll down).
I appreciate the Chancellor's affirmation that the community has some part to play in making Carolina North successful.
Why are the University's community relations people so tight-lipped about their new Carolina North committee? The town's Horace Williams Citizens Committee (HWCC) first learned about it in the paper in October. But at our last several meetings we have asked our University representative, Linda Convissor (UNC Director of Local Relations) for any news and she had none. When I ran into Jonathan Howes (UNC Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Local Affairs) he asked me why we keep hounding Linda for information.
Perhaps it's because we can't collaborate with a partner that doesn't share critical information? It's also because "UNC news" is a standing item on the HWCC's agenda, and we can't do much of anything without it.
The chairman of a new "leadership advisory committee" being set up by UNC to get input on Carolina North planning will be Kenneth Broun, a former mayor of Chapel Hill and former dean of the UNC School of Law.
Let's see... tuition keeps going up... staff and faculty need raises... and the fattest cats on campus get raises based on a bigger percentage of their bigger salaries!
Raspberries to the General Assembly and UNC Board of Governors, for handing out raises to top university officials as if they had already won the lottery.
Raise your hand if you're accustomed to raises of up to 16 percent from one year to the next. That's what we thought.
The UNC Board of Governors approved raises for system presidents of 8 percent to 16 percent. James Moeser, chancellor of UNC Chapel Hill, got a 13 percent hike.
The board said the increases were necessary to keep the state system competitive with other universities nationwide. But it's an all-too-familiar slap to regular folks, including state employees with titles less lofty than chancellor, who are told the budget can't handle more than a 2 percent raise.
- Chapel Hill News, Roses & Raspberries, 11/16/05
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