UNC System Lobbyist Urges Calm Amid Trump’s Directives

In President Donald Trump’s first few weeks of office, his administration has issued a flurry of executive orders and directives that caused widespread confusion for colleges and universities. 

But Elizabeth Morra, the University of North Carolina System’s top in-house lobbyist in Washington, is urging patience and calm while the new administration gets to work.

“We’ve tried to just, you know, tell our folks just to stay calm at this time, and we’ll see where this is going,” Morra, the system’s vice president for federal relations, told The Assembly.

Morra has been the system’s liaison to the federal government for about seven years. As she enters her second Trump presidency in the job, she’ll be in charge of pressing the public universities’ case to North Carolina’s elected representatives and to federal officials.

A draft of the UNC System’s federal priorities for the 119th Congress, which the Board of Governors will vote on at its February meeting, emphasizes several initiatives that could be affected by the Trump administration’s plans, including campus-based aid programs and federal funding for research. The National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation paused all grant reviews shortly after Trump took office, and the administration later sought to freeze all federal grants. (That order has been blocked by federal judges for now, and some grant reviews have restarted.)

In other moves that could affect colleges and universities, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded a policy that had long barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from pursuing enforcement actions in “sensitive locations,” including schools and college campuses. Other executive orders targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, leading some colleges to make adjustments.

As the administration rolled out policy changes last week, The Assembly spoke with Morra about her job and how the system is responding to the White House’s directives.

This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. 

Tell me about what your day-to-day work looks like in Washington.

My job is to be the eyes and ears in Washington, D.C., for the UNC System. I carry whatever message we’re trying to send to Washington to our delegation members. So I work real closely with the North Carolina members of Congress, both the House and Senate, and their staffs. I communicate more regularly with their staffs, keeping them up to date on certain things. If we have a fire drill on any particular issue or question about a new regulation coming, or something like that, I stay in close touch with them—whether it’s something involving our military veterans, students, to immigration issues, to anything that touches higher ed generally—and facilitate those relationships. I try not to just go to them when I’ve got a fire drill. I try to keep an ongoing relationship with them on a regular basis.

You outlined the UNC System’s federal priorities for the 119th Congress at the last Board of Governors meeting. What is on your agenda as you start to craft new relationships with this Congress?

Because we have five new members, we’re trying to really get out there proactively with the message on what we’re doing in terms of student success and affordability and accountability—the fact that graduation rates are up, enrollment is up, student debt is down. 

These types of messages, they’re not familiar with. A lot of our new members, in particular, don’t know the fact that we’ve held tuition flat for nine years. We try to start every meeting with that because I feel like sometimes that doesn’t translate. You saw that President [Peter] Hans did it today again, too. We’re trying to make sure we get credit for that because it’s huge. I think North Carolina is a leader on that front, especially on accountability. And it’s one of the reasons we have such great state support, too, which makes us a little bit different than other states.

Executive orders and directives from the Trump administration have caused a lot of uncertainty and confusion for colleges. How are you navigating all the new rules and orders coming out?

I think with any new administration, you’ve just got to let things settle in. When it came from the top down this week, President Hans said, “Let’s give the administration time. It’s a new administration. Let’s not overreact. Let’s let this work its process.” And it turned out to be a great strategy, because everything was reversed yesterday. [Editor’s note: Trump’s freeze of all federal funding was temporarily paused by judges in rulings last week.] So it’s a new administration. We always try to figure out where things are headed, and then figure out how we fit into that—whatever the mission is.

One of the system’s priorities is federal funding for research. Given the pause in grant reviews and other funding-related changes, how is the system approaching that initiative?

We benefit to the tune of $2 billion in federal research funding for our campuses, in the state of North Carolina, too. So it’s a big priority, and continues to be. We work with our associations on different advocacy efforts to make sure the members of Congress understand the very real translation between funding research and jobs in the state. You always, with a new Congress, need to make sure that they understand the connection between higher ed and research funding, as well as our campus-based aid programs too, like Pell grants and student aid. 

I mean, initially, there was some concern when that first order came out, the question was, what about Pell grants? What about student aid? And initially, it was very unclear, because they said the funding was going to flow to individuals. But of course, Pell grant money goes to the institutions and then to individuals. So it was a little unclear. So we were relieved to find out all the Title IV funding was going to be safe in that from a pause. But then again, it was just a pause—[until] February 10. We’ve tried to just, you know, tell our folks just to stay calm at this time, and we’ll see where this is going.

Another top of mind issue right now is immigration, especially as it relates to student visas, undocumented students, and cooperation with ICE. What conversations are happening about those changes and how the UNC System and its schools will comply?

I think right now we’re just in monitor mode to see what this all means. We have people in the system office who have legal expertise in immigration, and I rely on them a lot. I feed to them what I get from the higher ed associations on if there’s a change coming down the pike, or if there’s a new reg of some sort that’s impacting our international students. I send it along, and then I rely on them to sort of interpret for me: Is this something we need to reach out to the congressional delegation on or not? So we’re kind of just monitoring…Of course, there’s going to be a lot on that front.

While a lot of questions remain about what the various DEI orders will mean for colleges, what can you say about how it may apply in North Carolina?

That kind of falls into this bucket we’re monitoring to see where this lands, right? We know that there’s going to be some pauses put on programs so they can re-evaluate everything. So we’ll be watching. But I just don’t know at this point where that’s all going to end.

Erin Gretzinger is a higher education reporter at The Assembly. She was previously a reporting fellow at The Chronicle of Higher Education and is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. You can reach her at erin@theassemblync.com.