I worked in journalism before academia, and we often relied on experts to help us understand things. So, the UNC news reminds me one of the surprising things about academia is how universities often forget about the intellectual capital they have to help solve problems.

I mean, this is something else. Does their chancellor not know about the psychology and sociology departments on his own campus? https://twitter.com/joekillianpw/status/1295472767081615363?s=21 https://twitter.com/joekillianpw/status/1295472767081615363

On faculty senate I find myself routinely asking about communication issues, for example. We have knowledge all over campus to attack problems as a community but too often we hire consultants to “solve” problems for us. So you lose buy-in and solutions aren’t community-centered.

It’s not just the obvious part about students gonna student. The knowledge on campus might help you design systems, procedures, info campaigns to help alter behavior enough to keep things afloat. My colleague @PackerLab had a nice thread about this: https://twitter.com/packerlab/status/1282736735227654146?s=21 https://twitter.com/packerlab/status/1282736735227654146

Anyhow, it might not solve everything. It might fail! But at least your campus owns the plan together and can say they tapped into every wealth of knowledge the campus has.