Marching orders

For those who are inclined to believe the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has too many highly paid bureaucrats doing too little work, Exhibit A might now be a well-meaning program to help deployed soldiers of the National Guard and the Army Reserves. U.S. Rep. David Price of Chapel Hill undoubtedly believed he was doing a good day's work when he slipped $10 million into the federal budget for an effort called the Citizen Solider Support Program.

The idea was that the university would develop ways to help soldiers in the guard and the reserves and their families cope with the challenges of service. That kind of support is available for full-time military personnel, but it's not so easy to find for part-time soldiers, whose lives are disrupted when they're called to duty. Jobs are put on hold, children are often confused because of the absence of a parent, marriages are disrupted. And when that soldier returns, adjustment is difficult.

Price even thought the program might set a national example. As indeed it should.

Yet after four years, and some $7.3 million spent, the head of the state's National Guard says he recently received the first service from the program -- a database of mental health care providers in the state who have helped people with problems such as post-traumatic stress that are associated with the military.

Maj. Gen. William Ingram, the head of the guard, says he's been to a lot of meetings and listened to a lot of jawboning and seen a lot of paperwork. But not much else has happened. Well...some things have happened. A quarter of the funding is going for overhead. Four employees out of eight full-time are making more than $100,000 a year, and travel and expense reimbursements have run to $76,000 for a deputy director who works out of northern Virginia but comes to Chapel Hill sometimes. Oh, and there was the $300,000 plus for an outside consultant.

UNC-CH Chancellor Holden Thorp is appropriately attentive, saying in an understatement that the program is "seriously flawed." And then there's the comment of one of the associate vice chancellors on the campus, who said, "In six months to a year, we'll be in the right place." Such a pace cannot be what Price had in mind, not given that so many of these service members are in need of help right now.

Hurry up and wait

It must be said that some training advances have been made, as a News & Observer letter-writer noted in an impassioned defense of the program. Price also believes the expenditure is one that will have dividends. But there should have been more results by now.

In the military, soldiers used to call this kind of thing "situation normal, all fouled up," or a snafu. The university's internal review found that not much has been done directly related to the program's mission. That review follows recent findings that many schools in the UNC system are top-heavy and over-titled, with duties under-defined. In this case, because this program is supposed to help the men and women in our military, the inefficiency is all the worse.

The university doubtless is operating with good intentions, but without an appropriate sense of urgency pointing toward concrete results. Thank goodness the soldiers they are supposed to serve don't share that attitude. Let us hope the UNC officials charged with this mission begin to stand at attention.

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