RALEIGH (February 12, 2025) – UNC Chapel Hill’s trustees have been warned before.
But they obviously didn’t listen.
• After repeated bouts of micromanagement and two trustees appearing in pre-arranged interviews with Fox & Friends and The Wall Street Journal to claim credit for establishing the School of Civic Life and Leadership, UNC System President Peter Hans and UNC Board of Governors Chair Randy Ramsey admonished the Board of Trustees in January 2024 that they serve only in an advisory capacity.
The chancellor – not the Board of Trustees – runs the campus.1
• A week after the trustees voted last May to transfer $2.3 million from diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs to campus safety, Hans said the trustees don’t have the authority to make line-item adjustments in the university budget, nullifying their decision.2
• The board was sued last year after members admitted they illegally discussed the university’s athletics budget in closed session, and the university had to pay $25,000 to settle the case.3
• At a meeting last May, board members publicly scolded Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham, a nationally respected AD, at a meeting where he was not present.4
• And the board undoubtedly created a hostile environment that drove away former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, a MacArthur “genius award” winner.5
NOW, AFTER multiple reports that Board of Trustees Chair Preyer and at least one other trustee involved themselves in the effort to hire celebrated football coach Bill Belichick,6 Hans suspended the Board of Trustees’ authority in athletic hires.
“Instances continue to occur where members of the board appear to act independently of their campus’s administration in matters squarely within the responsibility of the chancellor,” Hans said in a memo to Preyer and Chancellor Lee Roberts last month that was first reported by The Assembly.
“Independent and unilateral actions continue to create substantial legal risk to the University – jeopardizing the North Carolina taxpayers’ money by blurring the lines of actual and apparent authority when these athletic departments negotiate business transactions with third parties, including but not limited to current, former, and future athletic employees.”
Other than administrative hires, all contracts with athletic directors, head coaches and other athletic employees must now be approved by the System President, Hans’ memo says.
“Neither the board of trustees, nor any of its individual members, shall play any role in negotiation of such actions,” it says.
“Members of the board of trustees are reminded that … no individual member of the board has actual or apparent authority to act in the name of his or her respective campus or to bind or obligate that campus in third party contractual negotiations or advocacy on behalf of current or former campus employees.”7
IN SHORT, campus trustees have no power to negotiate contracts – that’s the chancellor’s job.
Why is that so very, very difficult for John Preyer and other UNC Chapel Hill trustees to understand?
In what CBS Sports described as a “fractured” search that resulted in a $50 million contract for Belichick over five years, the network described “two separate searches” – one by Athletics Director Bubba Cunningham and one by Preyer.8
“Part of the disconnect comes from the impression that Preyer and at least one other member of UNC’s board presented Belichick with a preliminary offer to make him the Tar Heels’ next coach,” The New York Times reported.
“Any board member going over top university officials’ heads to do so would violate the university’s bylaws, which would be grounds for dismissal from the board.”9
FOR YEARS, Belle Wheelan, President of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), which accredits colleges in 11 Southern states including North Carolina, has admonished UNC System governing boards to stay in their lane.10
It’s long past time for John Preyer and the UNC Chapel Hill Board of Trustees to do more listening to advice like that – and a lot less talking.
1 https://publicedworks.org/2024/04/a-well-earned-smackdown/.
2 https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article288686745.html.
3 https://www.wral.com/story/unc-pays-to-settle-open-meetings-lawsuit-over-board-of-trustees/21533304/.
4 https://www.newsobserver.com/sports/college/acc/unc/article288483185.html.
5 https://publicedworks.org/2023/11/little-wonder-why-guskiewicz-might-leave/; https://publicedworks.org/2023/12/they-drove-him-out/.
6 https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/inside-north-carolinas-fractured-coaching-search-that-ended-with-bill-belichick/; https://bobleesays.com/2024/12/11/the-man-who-turned-a-flagship-into-a-national-punch-line/.
7 https://www.theassemblync.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/HansJanuary16Memo.pdf.
9 https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5981891/2024/12/09/bill-belichick-unc-football-coaching-search/.
10 https://publicedworks.org/2021/03/best-board-practices-to-avoid-micromanagement/.
Lee Niegelsky says
Each of these “admonishments” from the President to BOT members and/or its Chair appear to this outsider to be little more than tut-tuting and finger wagging. In other words, the unintended result is to encourage repeated inappropriate behavior, as there certainly is no substantive consequence for it. Suspend, or dismiss, Preyer from the BOT and someone might take the BOT Bylaws seriously. Otherwise, it is logical to expect the BOT and its individual members to continue to freelance at their pleasure. Unfortunately, it also is logical to assume that the reason such action has not been taken is because Preyer’s political sponsor has assured him that he is free to do whatever he wants, and just to ignore President Hans and the Bylaws. Hans, becoming fully aware that he actually has no authority, can only make idle threats that serve to weaken him further in our current hyper-politicized climate.