ASHEVILLE – Proper governance of the University of North Carolina System is not a new issue.

At a July 2017 meeting of the UNC Board of Governors in Asheville, Dr. Belle Wheelan, president of the agency that accredits all 16 public universities in North Carolina, spoke to board members about their role.

“We ask you to make policy. Not to administer policy, but to make policy,” Wheelan says in the accompanying video from the meeting.

“When boards start micromanaging, you’re stepping out of your lane and it gets my attention. And then I have to come back in a different capacity,” she says.

Wheelan cites a case at the University of Virginia where a minority of three board members tried to force removal of the president.

“As an individual board member, you have absolutely no authority as far as we’re concerned,” she says. “Your authority comes as the board of the whole. And so we ask you to work together to try to get things done, rather than a small group trying to run stuff.”

Lou Bissette, then Chair of the Board of Governors, welcomes Wheelan’s guidance. 

“I think it’s something that all of us need to know and understand,” Bissette says.