In October 2024, UNCW posted two sentences about ending the Watson College of Education Razor Walker Award after 30 years.
“In 2024, the Watson College paused the Razor Walker awards and established a committee to review the award’s processes and procedures. Following this review, a decision has been made to discontinue the Razor Walker awards,” the authorless post read.
The ‘pause’ came after a contentious award given in 2023 to Republican State Senator Michael Lee, who was protested during that year’s ceremony. Following that, there were allegations of undue influence from powerful actors in the UNC System, who pushed for a conservative to receive the award. After going on the record about the situation, Van Dempsey, then dean of Watson College, was essentially removed from his position, although he remained on faculty.
Facing negative publicity, UNCW said it would pause the award and reassess, including input from faculty and staff. Officials have declined repeated requests to discuss the reevaluation process and decision to end the award. However, documents reviewed by WHQR indicate that feedback endorsed changing or revising the award – but not necessarily “sunsetting” it.
However, it’s likely the writing was already on the wall for the Razor Walker Award.
Despite having been tarnished, the award was meaningful to those who received it over the decades – and past winners told WHQR they hope Watson can continue to recognize those who “walk the razor’s edge for the children and youth of North Carolina.”
Razing Razor Walker
According to records provided by UNCW, incoming Watson Dean Dr. Tracy Linderholm made the decision to end the award.
On October 17, she sent out a memorandum that said “after careful consideration and reflection, we have made the decision to discontinue the Razor Walker Awards. The decision was not made lightly, as the awards have long been a symbol of outstanding service and dedication to our community. However, we believe it is time to move in a new direction.”
Linderholm did not say what that “new direction” might be, and there’s been no announcement of a revamped or new award.
An Office of Relations (OUR) spokesperson later wrote in an email to WHQR that discontinuing the award was “partly due to [the] required time and resource commitment.”
Documents reviewed by WHQR show an ad-hoc committee was established to assess the award. That included reviewing survey responses from almost 40 faculty, staff, and prior committee members. Based on the documents provided by UNCW, neither the survey results or the committee’s recommendations provided grounds to terminate the award.
Additionally, two 2023 committee members and former award recipients told WHQR they didn’t know the award was coming to an end either. However, in an email reviewed by WHQR, Linderholm stated that Dr. Bob Tyndall, a former Watson dean who helped start the award, was “communicated with.” Tyndall did not respond to a request for comment.
What really killed the Razor Walker Award?
The likely reason that the Razor Walker Award didn’t have a chance to continue was what happened in 2023, leading up to, during, and following the receipt of the award by Michael Lee.
In early June of that year, Port City Daily broke the story that Lee had finished second-to-last among twelve candidates rated by the award committee, but ended up as one of four award recipients.
After that, The Assembly published the story of how that happened – tracing the situation back to ire from conservative circles over the 2022 recipient Reverend William Barber II, an outspoken civil rights leader. That led to UNCW Chancellor Aswani Volety telling former Watson Dean Van Dempsey to make sure a conservative was named – and Lee got the nod. At the time, Volety denied this occurred.
It’s worth noting that there have been no allegations that Lee had personally pushed to get the award. Nor does it appear that his nomination, from then-NHCS superintendent Dr. Charles Foust – hardly a darling of the conservative establishment – had been coerced. However, Dempsey later acknowledged he helped Foust with the “framing” of the nomination – which focused on procuring $1-million in state funding for a facility study for Isaac Bear High School, which had for many years limped along in modular facilities decried by parents and elected officials.
Critics of the nomination, including some of the award committee, argued Lee was just doing his job as a state senator; proponents argued he’d been unusually persistent in supporting the Isaac Bear funding. (At the end of the day, the total cost to overhaul Isaac Bear could be upward of $45 million and no source of funding has been identified for the building beyond the initial study. UNCW has dedicated the land to build it but if those millions aren’t procured by June 30, 2027 then the offer expires.)
When Lee co-sponsored Senate Bill 49, the Parent’s Bill of Rights, dubbed in some progressive circles as NC’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill, a campus movement started to protest his upcoming recognition.
On the evening of the event, some faculty and students staged a walkout when Lee received the award. At the event, Lee was equanimous – and in reporting from The Assembly, Volety, Lee, and Dempsey agreed they had the right to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Someone didn’t agree, though: Wendy Murphy, then vice-chair and now chair of the UNC System Board of Governors.
Dempsey removed from his post, BOG dismisses his complaint
Shortly after the event, Murphy sent an email from her personal email account to Dempsey, Volety, and three Republican UNCW Board of Trustee members – Hank Miller, Hugh Caison, and Carlton Fisher. She also included the UNC System President Peter Hans and then chair of the Board of Governors, Randy Ramsey.
She wrote in part, “Those individuals who walked out when Senator Lee received his award should be ashamed, and there should be consequences if they are employees of our university.” Murphy also dedicated one of the email’s three paragraphs to calling out UNCW professor Dr. Caitlin Ryan.
She accused Watson faculty of not preparing future educators to teach children how to read, then segued into saying that if Ryan focused more on literacy rates than on social issues, then, “NC may not have such an embarrassing proficiency rate among 4th graders in our state. How wonderful it would be if Watson College were leading the way in teacher preparation!!!”
Murphy ended by saying she “looked forward to how the university handles individuals who behave in such an embarrassing manner and put us in a negative spotlight.”
Shortly after this email, Dempsey gave an interview to The Assembly giving his account of the politicization of the award, which implicated Murphy and Volety. Soon after the article was published, Dempsey was removed from his position as dean.
Dempsey filed a complaint in August 2023 with the Board of Governors Committee on University Governance, alleging that the behavior of Murphy in that email ran counter to UNC’s policy on ‘Duties, Responsibilities, and Expectations of Board Members’. Dempsey claimed that Murphy articulated “threats” to students, staff, and faculty who participated in the protest. Kellie Hunt Blue responded to Dempsey as the chair of that committee (Blue is now the vice chair of the BOG under Murphy).
Blue wrote to Dempsey that his claims had no merit and would be dismissed. She said that Murphy was acting in accordance with duties outlined in her leadership position, “Ms. Murphy’s actions are consistent with an active and informed member of the Board of Governors.”
Dempsey said just over a month after receiving that email, he found himself removed from his position.
Dempsey told WHQR he isn’t pursuing the issue further. Through a UNC System spokesperson, Murphy said that she didn’t know Razor Walker would be discontinued. She did not respond to questions about her initial email or Blue’s response, and deferred other inquiries to the UNCW media relations office.
UNCW officials won’t give interviews – but there is a paper trail
WHQR tried several times to speak directly with the Watson dean or other leadership at UNCW about discontinuing the award but those requests were declined, with a spokesperson instead answering questions in writing. So to more fully tell the story of the end of Razor Walker, HQR had to request public records about it.
A few months after the ill-fated award ceremony, in September 2023, Dr. Carol McNulty, the interim dean before Linderholm was hired, initiated a survey on the award. According to a UNCW spokesperson, it was sent to 150 faculty and staff. It received only about 40 responses, which went to the Razor Walker Review Committee.
The survey didn’t overtly ask about whether they could keep the award but asked questions about the timeline for the award’s return. However, there was an open-ended comment section – where responses provided clues on what respondents thought of the award and what had transpired.
According to HQR’s analysis of the results, those responses showed that five wanted the awards to be continued but with stipulations that it wouldn’t be overtly political or given to a politician. Another 15 said to keep it and provided feedback about its return. Three said to discontinue it – and 17 didn’t leave a comment about the award’s future.
One wrote, “This year’s Razor Walker Awards was a huge upset and disruption to the College with Dean Dempsey being removed and many faculty coming under personal attack from members of the BoG. [...] Declining enrollments make us politically vulnerable particularly to those who already hold negative views of Colleges of Education,” they then referenced an opinion piece by former UNCW Board of Trustee member and current BOG member Woody White about the ceremony.
One respondent who wanted to discontinue it wrote, “Maybe it is best to start fresh with a brand new award and a completely new process. I think the drama from the last two cycles with RW has tainted the whole award, to be honest.”
Another respondent was more blunt about those who walked out of Lee’s ceremony, “If any faculty and their student protesters show up and start trouble, call the cops and take them away in cuffs.”
McNulty deferred questions to the current Watson dean.
According to documents reviewed by WHQR, it appears some of the survey’s feedback went into recommendations from the ad hoc committee on the award’s future.
UNCW associate professor Dr. Heidi Higgins led a group of five faculty and staff to review the award (a UNCW spokesperson said they met twice). While there was no official report on how to move forward with the award, Higgins sent an email in June 2024 outlining how to potentially bring it back.
According to an email from Higgins to Linderholm, the ad hoc committee suggested the award's “adjustments” could include the following: excluding elected officials currently in office; allowing faculty and staff at Watson to be eligible for nominations, along with the potential to extend it to students; discontinuing some of the categories of awards like arts/literature, medicine/health and wellness, for example; and, taking a closer look at the role the Razor Walker Committee that gives feedback on the nominees, noting that “if the rankings aren’t considered when final decisions are made, what’s the purpose of the committee” and “we didn’t have access to how the nominees were evaluated.”
Higgins told HQR to contact the UNCW media relations on this subject but did write that she was “fortunate to have been a part of it for 14 years. While I deeply valued the purpose and spirit of the award, I respect the thoughtful decision to bring its chapter to a close.”
After Linderholm sent her brief memorandum telling former UNCW Provost Jamie Winebrake about the award’s end, he wrote, “I know this was a difficult decision, but I support it. I am copying Chancellor Volety, VC [Eddie] Stuart, and CCO [Andrea] Weaver for their information.”
Those involved with 2023 Razor Walker respond
Nick Rhodes was on the 2023 award committee and previously served on prior ones. He also won the award along with his wife, Deloris, in 2017. His recognition, he said, came from his work with organizations like New Hanover County Smart Start, Kids Making It, and 100 Black Men.
Rhodes said he wasn’t communicated with about the award’s ending, but wants to see it come back. He said it was something special that recognized contributions from people around North Carolina.
“We would get applicants from people from throughout the state, and I learned a lot being on that committee about the things that people were doing at different levels of education, and then to review those applications, make recommendations to the university. I really liked it. I thought it was a big deal, really,” he said.
Like Rhodes, Tannis Nelson was also on the 2023 committee and served on previous ones; she also won a Razor Walker award in 2003 for her involvement with the state and national Parent Teacher Associations and Smart Start. She and her husband endow a teacher scholarship at Watson and would recognize the recipient the evening of Razor Walker.
Nelson said awards typically have a lifespan but, “it’s disappointing that it had to come to an end.”
She addressed concerns about the award becoming politicized and whether the university didn’t recognize the contributions of both conservative and liberal politicians. She noted Republican Senator Ralph Hise won in 2018 for the funding of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library – something Dempsey had also previously said.
“I am a registered unaffiliated voter. I did not feel that it was partisan, because we had awarded it to some Republicans and Democrats,” Nelson said, but did add that she didn't like the way the protestors walked out during Lee’s award presentation.
Nelson said she remembered a time when she called former North Carolina Governor Mike Easley to see if she could nominate him for Razor Walker. Nelson said he declined because he felt he was doing his job.
“What was your impact outside of your job that you were being paid to do? That's what I looked for when I judged an award, and some of these people stepped way outside,” she said, mentioning a teacher, Richelle Dombroski, who won in 2017, in part because of her work with the teacher cadet program.
Professor Dr. Caitlin Ryan agreed to speak to WHQR as a faculty member and not as a representative of UNCW. She was one of the professors who walked out during Lee’s speech – and was referenced by Murphy in her email to UNCW leadership.
Ryan said she understood the need to take a break from the award.
“I think we saw that sometimes it can be really hard to represent multiple diverse constituencies, especially when there's not necessarily a very clear and transparent process,” she said.
However, she said she’d like a way to recognize educators and those who support children because it’s a tough job.
And Ryan said she stands by what happened the night of the awards ceremony in 2023.
“I am heartened to see that faculty were able to work within the bounds of the free speech rules and policies. I'm glad we didn't disrupt the event, but I am glad that there was a visual reminder of the fact that many people don't support Senator Lee's efforts to make education more limited and more exclusionary and more inequitable,” she said.
The walkout over Lee’s sponsorship of the Parents’ Bill of Rights, for her, stood as a testament to her value system both personally and professionally.
“I'm a mother myself, and my wife and I have a son, and we know the importance of him seeing himself in books and seeing families like ours in books. And this is research that's been documented [Dr. Cynthia Tyson, Dr. Wanda Brooks, Dr. Jonda McNair], around the importance of books as windows, mirrors to encounter diversity in the world, and how we get along with people who are like us and who are different,” she said.
WHQR reached out to Lee for comment but didn’t hear back. He has previously defended the Parents’ Bill of Rights, including in a long interview on The Newsroom, calling it common-sense legislation that gives parents assurances about what’s being taught in classrooms.
For Dempsey, he doesn’t think he would change what happened – knowing what was coming his way.
“I did the best job I could do, to be the person that I felt like I needed to be, to be the leader I needed to be, to be the educator I needed to be, to be the citizen I needed to be, to be the member of a democratic community I needed to be given the context that I had in front of me,” he said.
And as for those who help support education in North Carolina, he said it’s still critical that the work be recognized by Watson in some capacity.
“Don't cancel it by canceling me or canceling the protesters or canceling Razor Walker. Do the hard work to figure out what's the best expression of doing that work effectively, and then recognize people who do it, learn from it, so you can expand that work, so you can do more of that work. It doesn’t matter who it is or on what spectrum,” he said.
