North Carolina college students are concerned a UNC System policy draft could end some financial aid and legal services programs.
The regulation would prohibit student activity fees from funding initiatives that aren't available to the whole student body. This includes individual grants and financial assistance, which outgoing UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate Student President Leah Frazier said would impact campus emergency funds.
"These are not hypothetical situations," Frazier said at a UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees meeting last week. "They are students dealing with medical emergencies, housing instability, loss of income, or more recently the environmental disruptions like Tropical Storm Chantal."
Frazier said this year, her team has approved more than $22,000 to support graduate students in crisis.
"This funding is not discretionary — it's time sensitive and targeted support that often determines whether a student can remain enrolled during a period of instability," Frazier continued. "This fund exists because other systems do not fully meet this need."
At the trustees meeting, Chancellor Lee Roberts said he believes the concern at the UNC System level is that direct payments to individual students has a potential for misuse or fraud.
"I think what we have here is a situation where the draft regulation might be having unintended consequences," Roberts said. "And so this feedback is very helpful, I think, to the System in drafting the final regulation appropriately."
The policy draft, however, doesn't just prohibit individual financial assistance. It would also reduce funding for undergraduate student organizations and essentially defund campus legal services centers, according to outgoing UNC-Chapel Hill Student Body President Adolfo Alvarez.
He said that on his campus, student legal services help students with situations from reviewing contracts to dealing with a negligent landlord.
"They help them with that small resolution that otherwise they would get no support for," Alvarez said at the trustees meeting. "There are parts of this policy — that if they remain in the way that they're drafted — would harm students a lot."
Alvarez said the UNC System's policy draft would also place a 10% cap on student government fee allocations to student organizations. Right now, UNC-Chapel Hill's student government allocates 12% of those fees to hundreds of campus groups.
"Cutting down to 10% would mean about an 18% reduction when student organizations are already struggling with funding at the university," Alvarez said. "Student government, we always have to tell student organizations we can't make your full request — we'll meet 30% of it or 40% of it."
He and other student government leaders in the 17-institution System sent a memo to UNC System President Peter Hans expressing their concerns with the policy.
UNC-Chapel Hill student Javier Limon represents all of the UNC System's student government organizations and sits on the UNC Board of Governors. He told WUNC the UNC System Office has been working through feedback and that he anticipates the draft will be edited prior to any approval.
It's unclear when UNC System leadership is planning to implement the policy. WUNC reached out to the System for clarification, but they didn't respond.
At the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees meeting last week, Frazier suggested the university may have to fill funding gaps if System leadership passes the policy draft as is.
Marty Kotis, chair of the BOT's budget and finance committee, suggested the student group should look into alternative funding models.
"We heard earlier today that the Clef Hangers were fully funded and did a lot of things to fund themselves," Kotis said, referencing a national anthem performance a male student acapella group made at the board meeting. "Have you looked at alternate funding sources where students choose — let's say their fees are reduced — they then choose to contribute that money to a nonprofit fund that they feel is appropriate. That's generally what happens outside of the college environment; if you don't have funding for something, you find alternate sources."
According to the university cashier office, one of the purposes of student activity fees is to support the growth of student organizations and "the mission of each unique group."
WUNC partners with Open Campus and NC Local on higher education coverage.
