Chair of the UNC Board of Trustees Dwight Stone mentioned fairly standard topics during the chairman’s remarks at the board meeting last week – he laid out the committee leadership on the board for the next academic year, spoke about a dinner hosted by UNC System President Margaret Spellings with the chairs from Boards of Trustees across the system – but then his tone changed.

Stone thanked the campus leadership for providing an environment where productive discussions around tense topics could be held. Stone then said he wished that could be said for more of the country.

“Like most of you in this room, I’ve been deeply troubled by the events that have gone on in our country over the last several weeks and months,” Stone told those in attendance.

Stone was referring to recent shootings across the country involving police officers – separate incidents of African-American men being killed by law enforcement officers and then officers subsequently being targeted in other instances.

Stone said he was “scared for our society.”

“When friends tell me they sit down with their children [and] discuss how to handle a traffic stop by police, when they tell me of the fear that they have that something could cause harm to their child or themselves, by a very small percentage of misguided people, because of the color of their skin…there’s a certain loss of innocence in talks like that and it’s disturbing to me.

“I don’t understand what that’s like.”

Stone said he was also disturbed that police officers – who he described as “good, decent people” – were now nervous about going to work.

“When those same policemen are targeted by a few ideologically impaired people,” Stone said, “I don’t understand what that’s like.”

Stone extended his remarks to call for discussions around issues that can be contentious at times.

“Regardless of the color of our skin, or whether we are Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever,” Stone said, “we all have certain human rights.”

And Stone went on to quote legendary UNC basketball coach Dean Smith, who was known as much for his work involved with civil rights as his success on the court.

“There comes a time in every contest when simply standing on the sidelines is not an option,” Stone quoted. “Now is that time.

“We need to have earnest, intentional, honest conversations so that we can understand each other better.”

During the meeting’s intermission, Stone emphasized why he felt it was important to address these topics at the board meeting.

“Without having those kind of conversations and understanding each other, that’s what leads to breakdowns,” Stone said. “And it has been on my mind – both from a national level and a level here at the university – that I wanted to make sure that I spoke, on behalf of the Board of Trustees and myself, saying that we’re open to those conversations and that we know that those are things that we need to do from an understanding standpoint.”

Chancellor Carol Folt said the university would be working to ramp up efforts with Carolina Conversations, which began last year in an attempt to foster talks among the campus community.

“We’ve already started accelerating plans for that to happen more often and really advertise them,” Folt said. “I think there’s going to be a lot of work done in orientation – and not just about safety issues, but also about conversation and what it means to join suddenly in a new community; it’s not your hometown; all that we see as really critical.

“There have been people working on it all summer, and I’m really pretty excited about what I think will take place here in the fall.”