UNC-Chapel Hill is dealing with threats from some faculty and graduate teaching assistants to withhold grades as part of a protest over the university's treatment of student protesters and the reported suspension of more than a dozen students.
“The provost’s office will support sanctions for any instructor who is found to have improperly withheld grades, but it is our hope we can resolve this matter amicably and without harm to students,” declared a missive sent to deans and department chairs from UNC-Chapel Hill Provost Chris Clemens and Graduate School Dean Beth Mayer-Davis. “It would be a disservice to all of you and to the institution if a minority of instructors were to damage the trust we hold with our students by withholding grades.”
In a post on X, Congressman and attorney general candidate Dan Bishop (R-NC) said any professor withholding grades “should be fired immediately,” and, were he attorney general, he would sue for “a mandatory injunction commanding disclosure of the concealed grades and surrender of the record(s) of them.”
A letter to the university from faculty, students, alumni and community members expressing support to the administration’s decision to suspend protesters has received close to 1,500 signatures.
In all, some 15 students have been suspended from UNC-Chapel Hill because of protest-related activities, and the Students for Justice in Palestine organization at the university received an interim suspension.
The university has yet to name any of the suspended students or any of the other arrests made on April 30.
UNC-Chapel Hill made worldwide news last week when protesters took down the American flag from a campus flagpole, only to have a group of fraternity brothers move in to keep the flag from touching the ground.
More than $500,000 was raised in a GoFundMe to “throw a rager” for the students who protected the flag, though it’s not clear where that money will go or even who controls it.