If that protuberance in southern Orange County familiarly known as Chapel Hill were in fact a volcano, we'd now be in one of those phases when the seismologists scurry around on Mount St. Whatever's flanks, cameramen stake out their vantage points and the crater emits ominous burps.

All the indicators signal an impending eruption. Naturally, it will be an eruption of the political kind -- and the suspense hinges on whether, when the lava stops flowing and the ash falling, the University of North Carolina system as we've come to know it will still be with us.

The system, as it turns out, has its headquarters at our symbolic volcano's foot -- not an altogether pleasant spot under the circumstances.

And up at the crest lies the institution that is proudly hailed as the nation's oldest public university. What has become clear in recent weeks is that some of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's most fervent advocates are chafing unbearably at the constraints of membership in the larger system, in which their school must operate in tandem with 15 others of wildly varying size and mission.

The link between that chafing and the study that some legislators have proposed of how the system is governed has been more implied than trumpeted. But there can hardly be any question that sentiment to review the governance rules flows from dissatisfaction with the current set-up, and that certain UNC-CH supporters have been unhappy with their campus's assigned place as a cog in the grand UNC machine.

Tweaking the size or make-up of the UNC Board of Governors -- now an unwieldy agglomeration of 32 people chosen by the General Assembly amid back-scratching and back-stabbing -- is one of the possibilities to be looked at if the current legislation receives the green light. It's hard to argue with making the effort to see whether there might be a better way to pick the system's overseers.

Yet the study also would delve into the scope of the Board of Governors' powers, and "the effectiveness of the current structure." That obviously could become a path toward dismantling the structure as it now exists. The stakes are sufficiently large that the four immediate past governors are among those who have jumped up to object to such a study being allowed to get off the ground.

It's not a stretch to say that the unfolding debate echoes the donnybrook of 30 years ago that preceded the birth of the UNC system in its present guise. The question then was whether to bring the state's regional and historically black universities under the same umbrella as its large, old-line research institutions. The all-for-one, one-for-all philosophy finally carried the day, cutting down on competition for funds, reducing duplication of programs and shoring up broad public support.

While the unified system clearly has flourished, those three decades for the university in Chapel Hill have seen remark-able scholarly successes shadowed by a measure of disappointment. Its avowed goal is to become -- or perhaps to become again -- the best public university in the country. But by some gauges it is slipping, at least when it comes to educating undergraduates -- a duty that can be hard to reconcile with the research that attracts many top professors and brings in grants, but that cannot be allowed to sink down on the priorities totem pole because it affects so many students at such a pivotal stage in their lives.

Extolling the university's achievements and goals in a September speech, Chancellor James Moeser sought to downplay the soon-to-be-released rankings from U.S. News & World Report by branding them as "arbitrary and artificial." Which they may to some extent be. But at the same time, the rankings divulge data and trends that it would be silly to ignore.

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