UNC School system considering changes to diversity and inclusion efforts, potentially eliminating jobs

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WNCN) — Major changes could be coming to UNC System Schools as board members consider new admission requirements and diversity and inclusion efforts.

“I understand the university wants to make itself more selective, advertise itself as an elite university,” Hakeem Hopkins-Kotb, a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill, said.

The Board of Governors Committee is meeting this week to consider raising the GPA requirement for admission. For applicants who don’t meet that requirement, SAT or ACT scores would need to be submitted, something the university system did away with in 2020.

“You can’t really confine people to 3 numbers on a GPA, oftentimes people are a lot more than that,” Luca Antongiovanni, a student, said.

“For me personally I don’t think that’s the best thing, I’m not the strongest student in the world, so that would definitely take a toll on my acceptance,” Colin Reily, another student, said.

If the GPA requirement passes initial votes it’ll be voted on by the full board next month.

The board is also considering major changes to how campuses handle diversity, equity, and inclusion, removing jobs focused on those efforts.

“Diversity is definitely a problem here, that’s been my experience, it’s a primarily white institution, and you definitely feel that in a lot of aspects being at UNC,” Hopkins-Kotb said.

If a new policy passes, it will replace the current DEI policy immediately and require those jobs to be gone or drastically changed by September.

“I think this university has a lot of great things about it, but it’s diversity is not one of them, and I think a policy like this is only going to make that worse,” Hopkins-Kotb said.

A student group called TransparUNCy has organized students against the DEI change. In a statement, the group said in part, “The TranspareUNCy team firmly opposes the recent proposal by the UNC Board of Governors to repeal DEI in the UNC policy manual and any future proposals from the UNC-CH Board of Trustees that support divesting from DEI programming on our campus.”

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