The Millennial Campus Designation at Asheville’s public university lays out plans to develop campus property heavily. Among the plans for new construction are an arts amphitheater (UNCA recently cut the drama program); improved athletic facilities (the $41 million Sherrill Center was built just a decade ago); multi-use housing ($21 million of disclosed spending on the new housing built in 2018); and further investment into the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute infrastructure. In a vacuum, all of these may sound like fine initiatives, but it is more complex than that.

The projects are slated to take place on land that the university owns known variously as an urban forest, experimental forest, or urban woods. The sudden prospect of development led the community to band together and collectively speak their values, values that reflect a dedication to stewardship, ecological integrity and care toward those who would be negatively impacted — from the trees to the people who consider these woods part of their home.

After weeks of community activism, the chancellor most recently released what could be considered a tone-deaf message regarding the university’s stance on developing the forest:

“We continue to explore opportunities to develop our Millennial Campus properties, one of the University’s most valuable assets. While we are discussing our options with potential partners to inform our decisions, it is clear that we will develop these properties. Possibilities include affordable workforce and student housing, educational facilities, entertainment and recreational facilities, sports facilities, research industry collaborations, and childcare facilities, among other options.

“This development includes the property colloquially known as the urban forest, the experimental forest, the woods, and the south campus, among other names. Developing this and other properties will help diversify the University’s revenue streams, enhance our impact on students, employees, and the larger community. We are taking steps to provide you with the opportunity to share your thoughts, questions, and concerns about our plans, and we will do the same for other stakeholders, including local community members. 

“With UNC Asheville’s 100^th anniversary fast approaching, we have reflected upon our own history and how we have evolved since the institution’s founding in 1927. Now that we’re back on our feet after Helene, it is once again time to move forward, boldly, as did those who built the current campus on 165 acres of undeveloped land in 1961. We have come far. We have far to go. And I am grateful to all who join this collective effort.”

Breaking it down

I’d like to break down some of this language and illustrate that this message demonstrates a value system from university administration that is in stark contrast to what the community has become galvanized behind. “It is clear that we will develop these properties.” This is an attempt to strong-arm the citizens of Asheville into thinking that the urban forest is already no more and that the fight is over.

How many sessions with community stakeholders were held before they came to this conclusion? Has the administration seen our activism as something we have to get out of our system before the inevitable happens? 

The university is acting as though they are private owners of private property, when in reality, if UNC Asheville holds the title to the land, technically the state owns the title to the land, and it is the responsibility of the state government and those who are employed by it to consider the fact that these lands are held in trust by the citizens of the state.

We are both the beneficiaries and the benefactors of this land, paid for in taxes and tuition, and we deserve as much of a say as any other stakeholder. However, that premise operates under the assumption that the administration has a long-term stake in the community that they inhabit, a premise that has not been demonstrated in UNC Asheville or other state university system administrators. 

How did we get here?

Some broader context is in order: The North Carolina University System is in a state of crisis. Declining enrollment and massive budget deficits are leading many of these institutions to adapt and reshape as they look toward a potentially bleak future for higher education. The people of Asheville are watching as UNC Asheville releases statement after statement addressing these concerns: A $6 million dollar budget deficit in 2024, projected to grow to $8 million this year. A 25 percent decrease in enrollment in the past five years. Program cuts and faculty layoffs. How did we get here?

Let’s go back to around 2010. Around this time state universities across North Carolina began investing heavily in their campus amenities, hoping to grow enrollment by attracting more students with improved facilities. Naturally, new student housing, athletics facilities and building renovations come at a high cost, particularly when the designs resemble bourgeois resorts more than adequate student facilities, which seemed justified if we assume enrollment would increase steadily year by year.

That is where things have gone wrong. Since the Great Recession, fewer people have been having children and there has been a rise in homeschooling and K-12 absenteeism. These factors contribute to what is known as the ‘enrollment cliff’— a projection that between the years 2025-2030 college enrollment numbers will fall off dramatically, causing these costly investments to become liabilities.

So here we are in 2025, at the precipice of said cliff and we ask “how are universities adapting?” It would seem as though many, including UNC Asheville are doubling down on the strategy of spending justified by a blind hope in the future.

UNC Asheville is on its third chancellor in 10 years and more than twice that many provosts in the same amount of time. These administrators are key decision makers in our community, yet it could be argued that they are transient placeholders looking at the university and associated community assets as no more than line items on a budget sheet, moving on to the next position, never suffering the ramifications of their decisions.

How many years until the people telling us, “It is clear that we will develop these properties,” move on to another position, causing those that follow to inherit widespread community mistrust and a permanently damaged reputation of a once respectable institution?

Same old paradigms

To dive into this line even further, I’d like to point out that I am an alumni of UNC Asheville, class of 2018. Any student who has gone through four years at this university is well familiar with the humanities program, a required curriculum across all majors. From all the hours spent in those classes, one main theme stood out as a common thread in the curriculum — the concept of neocolonialism and how this paradigm is apparent and continually damaging here and now.

• The paradigm of doing what one damn well pleases with private property, even at the expense of the others nearby: “Now that we’re back on our feet after Helene, it is once again time to move forward, boldly, as did those who built the current campus on 165 acres of undeveloped land in 1961.”
• The paradigm of valuing economic value above all else, “Developing this and other properties will help diversify the University’s revenue streams, enhance our impact on students, employees, and the larger community”: Note the order of priorities with revenue streams first and community last.
• The paradigm that development will solve all problems: “Possibilities include affordable workforce and student housing, educational facilities, entertainment and recreational facilities, sports facilities, research industry collaborations, and childcare facilities, among other options.”

These are not new paradigms, just modern forms of the same paradigms that continually impoverish the landscape of natural resources, ignore community input to satisfy a bottom line and offset the problems they may cause onto ‘someone else’. Well, in this circumstance, someone else isn’t a far away, ambiguous concept. We, the community of Asheville, are someone else, and we refuse to stand for our land being negatively impacted by paradigms that are critical to break free of if we claim to care about the future.

We demand that chancellors demonstrate long-term care for the community they are impacting, which is near impossible when the record shows that turnover is higher than a fast food restaurant. We demand that you position yourself as a leader in inclusion, innovation and sustainability as your very mission statement poses, and show even a semblance of care towards the community.

It ultimately comes down to whether the administration of UNC Asheville is willing to weigh the long term character of the community, as well as its reputation among locals, with what appears to be a short-term, high risk strategy to raise revenue in order to address issues that reach beyond any athletic facility or new housing, issues of demographic changes and a culturally waning faith in higher education as an institution.