Students moved into their dorms Friday on the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill campus – and the school's new chancellor was there to greet some of them.
“I’m a freshman, also," said Lee Roberts, the former interim chancellor who was elected permanent chancellor on Aug. 9.
Other WRAL Top Stories
The school has an incoming class of 4,700 first-year students, Roberts said. That figure does not include transfers.
“They’re going to have a wonderful experience here," Roberts said before shaking hands with students, parents and others at Carmichael Residence Hall. "Everybody contributes to our community. Everybody’s experience is a little bit different, but hopefully everyone has a really positive experience."
The campus was rocked by the fatal shooting of associate professor Zijie Yan in August 2023, just a week into the fall semester. Graduate student Tailei Qi was found unfit to stand trail after being charged with killing his academic adviser. Campus was locked down for hours.
The school had another lockdown less than three weeks later.
The university hired an outside agency to review its actions and preparedness after the shooting. Among the recommendations, released in May, were active shooter and emergency training for faculty and staff, creating guidelines for video surveillance, consistency between emergency plans and making all offices and classrooms lock from the inside.
"The school is definitely going to take more precautions this year, and I feel it’s going to be better and safer for sure," said Naomi Karkowsky, a UNC sophomore from Oriental.
Roberts was interim chancellor when the report was issued.
“When parents send their children to Carolina, when students come to Carolina, they expect that we will do our best to keep them safe," he said Friday. "And we’re going to do our best to do that.
"We learned a lot of lessons from the Aug. 28 incident, obviously a terrible day for everyone who cares about this community, everyone who cares about this campus. And we’ll put some more measures in place that hopefully will help.”
With the new school year and new start, students were eager to get unpacked, meet up with old friends and get ready for the semester.
"I do have faith in them that they will help to keep the students safe," said Jalen Bailey, a UNC sophomore from Wilson.
His mom, Jennette, said she, too, had faith in the "proper measures and procedures:" will be put into place by the university.
On this day, she was already looking forward to another college milestone for her son.
"Him coming back home to visit," she said.