Some of the board members asked Hannah-Valentina Horowitz, president of the Student Government Association at UNCW, why some student body representatives voted against supporting tuition and fee increases despite the detailed financial analysis used to support it.
“So you're saying, just that headline is enough to scare them off that maybe a little more research would have been a different scenario," asked member Gidget Kidd.
Member H. Carlton Fisher asked, "the 18 [SGA members] opposed it, do you think were not well schooled?"
"Yes," was Horowitz's answer.
The board voted unanimously to increase tuition and fees by 5.5% for the upcoming school year, with undergraduate in-state students seeing no rise in costs.
* Editor's note: the story has been updated to reflect the 3% cap in tuition increase. This is in accordance to North Carolina state statue. The overall 5.5% is tuition and fees together.