House Speaker Joe Hackney, an Orange County Democrat and UNC-Chapel Hill alum, will visit his old stomping grounds Monday to tell students how laws, policies and rules that govern the university are made.

Hackney and Roger Perry, immediate past chairman of the university's Board of Trustees, will talk to students enrolled in the course called Role of the University in American Life.

Dome wonders whether the lesson will cover special budget provisions and university booster PACs.

Gov. Beverly Perdue praised UNC-Chapel Hill for taking steps to reduce its bureacracy and administrative spending.

The governor was the featured speaker today at UNC-CH's annual University Day ceremony, reports Eric Ferreri.

During her speech, she made reference to the Bain Report, which the university commissioned in hopes of finding efficiencies. The report this year found that the university had bloated administrative costs and too many layers of supervisors.

The report apparently struck a chord with Perdue. She said government should take note.

"Leaders here have focused on how to make the university run more efficiently and effectively — performing a broad study and putting it into action," she said. "And that’s exactly what we must do across state government."

Frank Roche says he wants some answers about a program at UNC that has little to show for more than $7 million it has received to help deployed soldiers of the National Guard and Army Reserves.

Roche, a Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. David Price of Chapel Hill, issued a release today questioning the money spent by the Citizen Soldier Support Program. The program was created in 2004 when Price inserted $10 million for it in the federal budget.

Internal audits at UNC have found that the program has produced a lot of paperwork, but few concrete results.

"Where is the oversight?" Roche asked. "It adds insult to injury that this money was intended to help our National Guardsmen and Army Reserve, who leave jobs and families to fight for our freedom."

A federally funded program at UNC-Chapel Hill was supposed to help deployed soldiers of the National Guard and Army Reserves.

Instead, the Citizen Soldier Support Program has produced reams of paperwork but few concrete results, according to an internal review.

"The CSSP is vulnerable to the accusation that it spends too much money on administrative overhead and low-priority 'nice-to-do' actitivities and not enough time on activities directly relevant to its mission," read the review.

The program was created in 2004 when U.S. Rep. David Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, inserted $10 million into the federal budget.

Since then, the program has spent $7.3 million. One-quarter of the money has gone to the university for overhead. Half of the eight full-time employees are paid more than $100,000 a year, including a deputy director who has been reimbursed $76,000 for food, travel and lodging when she commutes from her home in northern Virginia to North Carolina.

Price said the program is worthy of federal funding and that he still supports its goals.

"If these funds haven't been utilized in the most effective way, we need to correct it," he said. (N&O)

The fast-growing web of academic connections between rivals N.C. State University and UNC-Chapel Hill has prompted their respective trustees to ponder holding joint meetings twice a year.

Lawrence Davenport, chairman of the NCSU trustees, told his board Friday that he had called his counterpart at UNC-CH, Bob Winston, to broach the idea, and that Winston was receptive.

The state's two leading public universities, Davenport said, should have a closer working relationship, and the networking meetings, paid for by the trustees, could help. (N&O)

As in all things, the Minnesota Senate race came down to basketball today.

The lead attorneys for Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken arguing before the Minnesota Supreme Court today are from rival schools.

Coleman's attorney, Joe Friedberg, went to UNC-Chapel Hill for undergraduate and law school.

Franken's attorney, Marc Elias, went to Duke University for a master's degree and law school.

The session was slated to last 50 minutes, a little longer than an NCAA basketball game.

Hat Tip: A Dome reader

Correction: Another Dome reader, who knew Elias, points out we incorrectly stated he went to Duke for undergrad. 

Charges against seven campus protesters will be heard in September after one had her case continued and the others rejected plea agreements this morning.

Haley Koch, a Morehead-Cain scholar, faces a charge of disturbing the peace for protesting former Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo's speech April 14, Jesse DeConto reports.

Koch and another student held a banner in front of Riley Matheson, president of the campus chapter of Youth for Western Civilization, as he introduced Tancredo, a staunch opponent of mass immigration.

Her case and those of six other protesters in a second campus incident were scheduled for Orange County District Court this morning but will now be heard Sept. 14.

The other defendants protested at a speech by former U. S. Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia, who also favors stricter immigration policies, April 22.

More after the jump.

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Gene Nichol will be on The State of Things today.

The former dean of the UNC-Chapel Hill Law school, Nichol helped found the controversial Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and hired John Edwards to run it.

He then left to be president of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where his tenure was also controversial.

"He's back at UNC now," say the program notes. "So, what makes a legal academic a lightning rod?"

Hosted by Frank Stasio, the show airs at noon on 91.5 FM in Chapel Hill, 88.9 FM in Manteo and 90.9 FM in Rocky Mount.

It can also be downloaded after it airs here.

* The Appropriations subcommittee on health proposes "massive" cuts to state programs, some legislators call for tax hikes instead.

* Former Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Mike Munger proposes an alternative way of thinking about the Apple incentives.

* Conservative columnist David Frum takes the rivalry between Carolina and Duke to a whole new level: Tuition. (Hat Tip: Jon Ham)

* Charlotte Observer columnist Jack Betts eulogizes Jim Stephenson, policy analyst for the N.C. Coastal Federation, who died Thursday.