Someone send in the reinforcements, and be quick about it. Can you hear the thundering hooves? Can you see them in the distance, kicking up the dusty trail in front of South Building, hollering and waving their swords as they spread to the laboratories and classrooms?

And there stands General James Moeser in the midst of it all, his skin burning from the sun, his saber above his head, his buckskins tattered from wear, his boots muddy from hours on the battlefield. (And he's not getting in any practice on the organ, either.) The enemy? Why, it's the hordes of deans and chancellors and university presidents around the country who are trying to kidnap the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some say the devils are trying to clear out the halls at N.C. State, too.

What they do is, they come in and start waving that Long Green at our professors, begging them to come along and perform their enlightenment in Ann Arbor, in South Bend, in places where they won't work for a pittance. And according to some university officials, if the other universities keep up this intellectual thievery, we'll be lucky to have Old East and the Playmakers and maybe one classroom building left in Chapel Hill. The rest? Tumbleweed tracks, that statue of Silent Sam, and a cockroach or two from Grimes Dorm.

What can be done to stop what some of our academic leaders call a brain drain, a threat to educational quality -- when Moeser has discussed the recruitment of UNC-CH faculty by other universities, he's used words like "raid," "attack," and "assault" -- that results when other universities want our people?

Ah, well, there's this thing called tuition. The kids in Chapel Hill, and on some other campuses for that matter, know a lot about it. The rate's been accelerating faster than a Big Ram's heartbeat the first time he heard, "Roy's coming..." UNC-Chapel Hill has had the highest tuition boost in the country among public schools, percentage-wise, during the past four years, according to a highfalutin group that studies such things and as reported by The N&O's Jane Stancill.

The latest tuition hikes are being justified in part by the pooh-bahs because of what they think is a crisis in faculty salaries. Faculty members are underpaid, they say, and unless their pay can be boosted, more and more of them will flee to other places, lured by better money and bennies. (They note also that as tuition goes up they'll increase financial aid to help students who are strapped.)

Well, here's the problem. While they cite some anecdotal evidence to support the claim that a "raid" is in chronic progress, that seems a bit hysterical at this point. With all due respect to chancellors and the like, it's hard to prove that UNC-Chapel Hill is facing a crisis of monumental proportions...because of some "assault." The truth is, any employer in America, public or private, academic or otherwise, faces times when an employee will get an offer to go somewhere else and have to balance the pros and cons of the choice.

Sometimes the issue is money; sometimes, it's family; sometimes, it's location and lifestyle. The loss of that employee, while it might be regrettable, is hardly on the order of a catastrophe. And let's just be honest about it: The academic life is a pretty good gig whether you're in Anchorage or Honolulu, particularly considering the job security that comes when the velvet pillow of tenure is slipped 'neath one's haunches.

Oh, and students in Chapel Hill and on other campuses, who are being asked to pay higher and higher tuition and fees, also couldn't be blamed for raising a matter of irony: They're told they have to pay more to boost professors' salaries because faculty are underpaid while they watch the UNC-CH Department of Athletics pant after a basketball coach and ultimately cobble together for him (salary, shoe deal, radio/TV, human sacrifice) a compensation package worth something like $1.6 million a year.

No wonder there's some resentment among those students about getting hit up again and again, and about the fact that university officials (and lawmakers who approve other tuition boosts, for that matter) seem to have completely forgotten about the state constitution's promise to keep the cost of a public education as close to free as "practicable." One wonders when a lawsuit will challenge the hikes on that basis.

Those university administrators who defend tuition increases by talking about what a bargain a public education in this state is are sifting and simplifying a bit too much. The constitution's promise is rooted in a belief that's as sensible as it is noble -- give people (in a state with many low-income families who can't afford to send kids to college) a chance at higher education, and they'll make their state better while they're also improving their own lives.

Let's hope university leaders will ponder that historic covenant before they put the touch on students again.

(Deputy editorial page editor Jim Jenkins can be reached at 829-4513 or at jjenkins@newsobserver.com)

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