UNC leaders' reminder: We're important for this state's future - Jane Stancill and Jay Price, Charlotte Observer

As the UNC system enacted a controversial tuition increase last month following a 15.6 percent state budget cut, the bad news just kept coming. Several stalwart UNC supporters announced their retirement from the legislature - including House Minority Leader Joe Hackney, an Orange County Democrat, and Sen. Richard Stevens, a Cary Republican who led the appropriations committee. Those exits followed the departure last year of decades-long UNC champion Marc Basnight, the former Senate leader, and in 2009, Sen. Tony Rand. In a state with a long history of generous taxpayer support for higher education, people began to wonder: Who will now speak up for the university in the halls of power?