The unsigned editorial is the opinion of Technician’s editorial board and is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief.
This week, the UNC Board of Governors elected former NC State student body president, student athlete and vice chancellor Kevin Howell.
Technician is excited by this choice and optimistic about what it means for NC State. We commend the Chancellor Search Advisory Committee, UNC System and NC State for the election of Howell, who represents a promising future for the University.
The editorial board is impressed by Howell’s extensive and varied experience with NC State in an era where universities are increasingly hiring business executives and political pundits from outside the campus and higher education. Howell will become the third NC State graduate to ever lead the University and brings a wealth of experience informed by being a true member of our campus.
Howell was NC State’s first Black student body president and will be its first Black chancellor. He was a student athlete on the wrestling team. At his announcement event, Howell said he could never “have imagined the doors that would be opened for [him] because of an NC State degree.” Howell is the archetypal member of the Pack and takes pride in it.
Howell is a graduate of NC State’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences, earning his bachelor’s degree in political science. The last few decades of NC State’s development have focused heavily on Centennial Campus and the expansion of our STEM fields; to have a leader with a humanities background is a breath of fresh air and a testament to the full, well-rounded nature of our University.
NC State had every opportunity to repeat the sins of its sister institution, UNC-Chapel Hill. The UNC System elected Lee Roberts chancellor of the university last summer, widely considered a political appointment at the behest of the Republican-controlled General Assembly.
Roberts came with little public education background and notoriously made a name for himself by staging a photo-op raising the American flag flanked by a police force beating his students to a pulp. His election was broadly opposed by students, whose voices were seemingly ignored in an irregularly hasty appointment process.
In the end, the robotic Roberts is as disconnected as he can be from UNC’s student body. It was only natural for the prospect of a chancellor search at NC State to bring anxieties of a repeat.
Meanwhile, Howell feels more connected and in-tune with NC State than we ever could have imagined the Pack’s new chancellor to be.
While Roberts feels like he’s been dropped in a foreign country and being forced to occupy it, Howell feels like an old friend coming home. In his speech, he talked about his experiences at NC State, specifically the moment his father drove him from his childhood home in Shelby, North Carolina to Raleigh. It’s a moment we all remember, something we can all relate to, much like the rest of Howell’s experiences at NC State.
These experiences make Howell genuine and authentic, something that can be taken for granted in spheres such as higher education and politics. We’ve been lucky to experience the pure likability of Chancellor Randy Woodson, so we’re thankful the Chancellor Search Advisory Committee also recognized the importance of these traits when making its decision on our 15th chancellor.
While Howell will undoubtedly face tough decisions that have the capacity to make or break his tenure as chancellor, his decades of experience at the University and down-to-earth qualities make us hopeful that he will handle those challenges with the care and compassion they will undoubtedly require.
We can’t know what challenges may face our University, but we can prepare for them by boasting a leader who we trust to address whatever comes our way with the best interest of the students at the forefront of their decision-making.
