Greensboro News and Record. April 24, 2024.

Editorial: UNC HBCU’s deserve utility funds

It may have been an unusually mild winter in the Triad in 2024, but not all the time. And not for everyone.

For instance, during a short, frigid spell in January, 34 buildings at N.C. A&T lost heat and hot water, including eight residence halls.

Two days of classes were canceled.

A third day of class was held virtually.

And, as the News & Record’s Jessie Pounds reported, hundreds of young lives were shaken and stirred.

As temperatures plunged in their rooms, students were told they couldn’t stay and would need to be gone by 9 p.m.

More than 1,800 shivering, confused students suddenly were displaced from their dormitories.

Some left for home. Others stayed in hotels.

In either case they were not happy, adding new meaning to the expression “bitter cold.”

One student told the News & Record she might transfer.

“I’m disappointed,” Aniyah Mathews said. “And I’m just shocked right now because as a freshman, I don’t feel like I should be going through these things. I came here to get my education.”

Is this any way to run the nation’s largest HBCU?

Of course not.

But A&T didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

It was merely playing the hand it had been dealt, in this case a 25-year-old boiler that was well past its prime had taken its last warm breaths in the fall.

In other words, it died of old age.

“If it was replaced earlier, we would not be here today with the problems we’ve experienced,” Bill Barlow, A&T’s associate vice chancellor for facilities, told the News & Record at the time.

But it wasn’t and so A&T ordered a replacement boiler, which takes a year to be built and delivered and won’t be here until the end of 2024.

In the interim, A&T leased a temporary boiler, which it jerry-rigged outside of the university’s steam plant.

And as a back-up for that one, the university leased a second temporary boiler.

Which seemed like a good plan until that January cold snap, when both temporary units failed.

While crews thawed frozen pipes and welded damaged valves, students were evacuated.

The day the heaters didn’t heat is worth remembering as state lawmakers convene for their biennial “short” session, during which they make adjustments to the two-year state budget. One of the items on the agenda is neglected utility funding for the HBCU’s in the UNC System, including A&T and Winston-Salem State.

The UNC Board of Governors in February approved a request for $21.5 million to address the problem, WUNC reported this week.

Board member Joel Ford minced no words in describing the magnitude of the problem in a Board of Governors meeting.

“When they have to ship students off-campus to provide them with lodging where they have hot showers and heat and meals, it’s quite frankly unacceptable,” said Ford, a former state senator who also happens to be a 1992 A&T alum.

If lawmakers approve, the $21.5 million would pay for boiler replacements, emergency generators and sewer repairs, among other infrastructural needs.

And while a shiny new building may seem sexier, when the heat shuts down and there’s no hot water, it’s cold comfort in the January chill.

END