University of North Carolina Athletics
The Carolina Covenant
February 10, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 10, 2004
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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Tar Heel Basketball Coach Roy Williams is lending his name and - with his family - making a generous gift to the Carolina Covenant, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's groundbreaking initiative to make a Chapel Hill education possible debt-free for low-income students.
Williams, a 1972 Carolina graduate and the nation's winningest active college coach, and his wife, Wanda, and their children, Scott and Kimberly, have pledged a $100,000 gift to the Carolina Covenant. The Carolina Covenant was a first for a major U.S. public university when it was announced last fall to emphasize UNC's traditional commitment to access for those who are academically qualified.
Williams, an Asheville native, also endorses the Carolina Covenant in a new 30-second institutional television message that will debut tonight during Jefferson-Pilot Sports' regional broadcast of the UNC-Georgia Tech basketball game at 9 p.m. UNC will use the Williams spot in its future national and regional TV games and show it in other venues including at the Dean E. Smith Center.
The spot opens with a narrator noting Carolina's commitment to excellence, a better future and educating the next generation of leaders in medicine, business, education and other fields. Then Williams discusses one of the university's latest commitments - the Carolina Covenant - from one of the most picturesque academic settings on campus: the Rare Book Reading Room in the Louis Round Wilson Library.
Says Williams in the spot: "The Carolina Covenant is a promise. It's a promise to help kids from low-income families get a college education debt-free. It's a promise that Carolina is proud to make because everyone deserves a shot."
Starting next fall, the Carolina Covenant will enable qualified low-income students to come to Carolina and graduate debt-free if they work on campus 10 to 12 hours weekly in a federal work-study job instead of borrowing. UNC will meet the rest of those students' needs through a combination of federal, state, university, and privately funded grants and scholarships.
When UNC Chancellor James Moeser announced the Carolina Covenant last October in his "State of the University" speech, Williams called the chancellor to say that he was proud of Carolina's leadership. He also expressed interest in making a personal gift to assist students with needs the initiative aims to meet.
The coach's call later gave Moeser the idea to ask Williams to appear in the university's TV message. (Most networks airing men's basketball and football games give each campus 30 seconds of air time for an institutional message supplied by the university. Those spots typically run at half-time or another point in the broadcasts.)
"The university is grateful for all of Coach Williams' generous support for the Carolina Covenant and what it stands for: a commitment to access for those students who can make the grade academically regardless of their ability to pay," Moeser said.
"Coach Williams was moved by this powerful message, and now he is helping us reach out to prospective students, their parents and the public," the chancellor said. "His involvement, as one of America's most successful coaches and teachers, is just one more indication of the strong momentum the Carolina Covenant has achieved over the four short months since it was announced."
The gift from the Williams family counts toward the university's Carolina First Campaign, a comprehensive, multi-year private fund-raising campaign with a goal of $1.8 billion to support Carolina's vision of becoming the nation's leading public university.
The covenant is the first program of its kind to be launched by a public university in the United States. The University of Virginia just announced plans for a similar program. UVA officials began consulting with their Chapel Hill counterparts to learn more about UNC's program shortly after it was announced.
Several other major public campuses have been exploring the possibility of creating similar programs and have contacted the university for information. Reaction in North Carolina and across the nation has been overwhelmingly positive to the UNC plan. University officials have been in frequent demand in recent weeks to give presentations at national and regional meetings with educators and others. Interest from public school officials and even elementary school-age students also has been strong.
Carolina's initiative comes at time when the cost of college is rising steadily for low-income families. Nationally, the average student loan debt has nearly doubled to $17,000 over the past decade. About one-fifth of the full-time students work 35 or more hours a week.
As a result, many low-income youth abandon plans for college - or drop out - because the burden of that debt and workload is too much. The patterns are even stronger among minority students. Research also shows that low-income families need more information - and greater predictability - about the availability of financial aid.
The Carolina Covenant responds to such concerns. The university already meets 100 percent of the documented financial need of all students who apply for aid on time, but about a third of that need is being met through loans. To fund the Carolina Covenant, the university will make reallocations of existing funds in the Office of Scholarships and Student Aid and pledge growing private gifts dedicated to low-income students.
Eligible students must be at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Under current federal poverty levels, a family of four with an annual income of about $28,000 would qualify. For a single parent with one child, the eligible income would be about $18,000.
The state of the economy and the rising number of families living in poverty demonstrate the need for the Carolina Covenant. Since one in four North Carolina children now live in poverty, the need for an accessibility initiative like the Carolina Covenant will remain strong. According to the North Carolina Children's Index of 2002, more than one-third of North Carolina's families made less than $28,000 a year in 1999, the last year data were available.
In fall 2003, 281 of Carolina's freshmen, or 8 percent of the freshman class, came from low-income families. Most of those - 89 percent - were from North Carolina. More than half were minorities. Federal and state financial aid covered about 60 percent of the college costs for those students.
