change in what had been a strained town-gown face-off over that great canvas for
innovation and world-changing ideas, the
Carolina North satellite campus. Thorp,
whose wife, Patti, has parlayed her relationships with town leaders into an involvement in some of the issues, was happy to
take some of the credit for a zoning breakthrough that could get earth turned soon.
Thorp warmed up the administrator’s
often-awkward efforts to communicate
with a sensitive and entertaining blog.
Where the money malaise is concerned,
he says that among leading universities,
“there are a lot people that would trade
places with us right now.”
And he was reminded daily of a basketball championship by the 3-point line and
free throw lane that were painted around
his parking space.
Finding balances
Many of the residents of the countryside around Chapel Hill have direct ties to
the University, and many who farm that
land do not. The last thing a chancellor
needs is any of them feeling that UNC is
the 800-pound gorilla that sits wherever it
wants.
On a Friday in January, there was a
gathering in Thorp’s conference room that
included residents of southwest Orange
County who had had a sour attitude
toward the University’s search for a
replacement site for what has been Horace
Williams Airport. The flying needs of
UNC’s Area Health Education Centers
doctors and the flying wants of others were
not their concern, and an airport (Horace
Williams cannot co-exist with the Carolina
North site on which it sits) would be an
unwanted neighbor.
The University, Thorp said, had made a
mistake in getting the N.C. General
Assembly’s permission to establish an airport authority and go looking for land
without fully airing its intention with area
residents. “We ended up surprising people
with the legislation far more than we
should have,” he said at the time.
But the Orange countians were not
chanting or carrying signs. Their concerns
had been addressed pre-emptively, and
everybody up to the chair of the county
commissioners was happy by the time the
cameras were rolling.
In an August interview, with his charac-
‘There are a lot people that would
trade places with us right now.’
PHOTOS BY DAN SEARS ’ 74
Thorp is a young 45 — he’s very comfortable
jumping into the middle of student events,
singing with the Clef Hangers and, here, hamming it up at Fall Fest. His South Building
parking space got an impromptu paint job that
he left untouched for months.
teristic tone of dry understatement, Thorp
said, “I’m not going to build an airport.
People who were unhappy, we talked to
them, and people who were happy, we
talked to them, and nobody felt like at the
end that we were hiding anything or had a
secret agenda.”
In the Tancredo affair, there was no
agenda either, at least not on the administration’s part, but Thorp wishes UNC had
been better prepared for the latest iteration
of protest-turned-muzzle.
Members of Students for a Democratic
Society, Carolina Hispanic Association and
Feminist Students United staged a protest
against the former congressman who came
in April to speak about his opposition to
illegal immigration. Shouting gave way to
disorder, and Tancredo left before he got
started. UNC police used pepper spray and
the threat of a Taser. But the real outcry
came later, when North Carolinians
shouted down what they saw as the University’s unwillingness to protect a speaker’s
right to be heard.
