University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Equal Opportunity/ADA Office.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill put its first affirmative action plan into effect 1 July 1973. In September of that year, the chancellor appointed an affirmative action officer and advisory committee. Douglass Hunt, who served as the first affirmative action officer, was also vice chancellor for administration. There was no full-time officer or separate Affirmative Action Office until January 1981. In November 1995, the name of the office was changed to Equal Opportunity/ADA Office. The affirmative action officer reports directly to the chancellor.

Late in 1971 the Atlanta Regional Office for Civil Rights of the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare undertook a review of the six institutions then comprising the University of North Carolina system to determine the degree of their compliance with Executive Orders 11246 and 11375, which prohibited discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The review was completed and its findings communicated to the system's General Administration in September 1972. General Administration then directed each campus to submit a plan for an affirmative action program by 20 April 1973.

Chancellor Ferebee Taylor of the University at Chapel Hill appointed an Affirmative Action Program Committee, chaired by Professor John L. Sanders, to draft a plan that would enable the HEW to find that this institution is in compliance with the Executive Orders. On 20 April the Chapel Hill campus submitted an interim plan to General Administration. The final plan was approved by Chancellor Taylor and became effective on 1 July 1973.

It provided for (1) hiring goals, (2) an affirmative action officer appointed by and responsible to the chancellor, (3) an Affirmative Action Advisory Committee, and (4) the broadening of recruitment procedures. It stated that hiring searches must involve strenuous efforts to bring women and blacks of competitive quality into consideration along with whites and males and that the department or school must recommend the candidate (of whatever sex or race) who best fulfills its criteria, and must be able to defend this recommendation.

Douglass Hunt became the first affirmative action officer on 14 September 1973. The Affirmative Action Advisory Committee was appointed at the same time. The position of affirmative action officer was not then defined as a full-time position. It was one of a number of responsibilities Hunt had as vice chancellor for administration, a position to which he had been appointed on 1 July 1973. Chancellor Taylor, in his 14 September memo announcing Hunt's appointment as affirmative action officer, explained that Hunt would be assisted by Susan E. McDonald, assistant to the vice chancellor for administration, and that he would also have direct oversight of the university offices responsible for personnel records and data, namely the University Personnel Office and the Office of the Registrar and Director of Institutional Research.

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare did not approve the university at Chapel Hill's 1973 Affirmative Action Plan. Its official comments on the plan were communicated by the Atlanta Regional Office for Civil Rights to Chancellor Taylor in a letter dated 24 September 1973. OCR stated that, though the plan showed evidence of considerable effort, it did not meet all the requirements of Revised Order No. 4, which was the implementing order for Executive Order 11246 and which instructed institutions to provide a number of kinds of data to document whether they were underutilizing women and minorities in various job categories.

On 1 February 1974 the campus submitted an expanded Affirmative Action Plan; it also submitted, separately but at the same time, detailed supplementary data on the availability of women and minorities as well as salary and utilization analyses. The university had to compile these availability data because there were no national availability data published at that time. OCR found the 1974 plan a considerable improvement over past efforts but still inadequate in a number of areas. The 1974 plan was drafted by the Affirmative Action Working Committee, chaired by Susan E. McDonald.

Subsequent plans were drafted by Douglass Hunt and his staff; and they were subject to some of the same criticisms by OCR as the earlier plans. The central issue was the unit-level at which utilization analyses should be made and hiring goals set. The university argued for division-wide or school-wide goals, maintaining that departmental goals were unrealistic. Ongoing negotiations between the campus and OCR concerning affirmative action in hiring were further complicated by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare's dispute with the University of North Carolina system over racial duality, which ended in an administrative proceeding (University of North Carolina v. United States Department of Education et al.) and a consent decree.

Another of Hunt's responsibilities was to assure the university at Chapel Hill's compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which required academic programs and facilities to be accessible to persons with disabilities. He retained this responsibility for several years after Gillian T. Cell succeeded him as affirmative action officer in 1981. Not until 1 February 1986 did Chancellor Fordham relieve Hunt of his 504-compliance duties and assign them to Affirmative Action Officer Robert J. Cannon.