Several hundred students, faculty members and alums held a rally today at UNC-Chapel Hill in an effort to get the university's chancellor, Holden Thorp, to reconsider his decision to step down. Thorp has offered to resign in the wake of a series of athletic-related scandals at the university. Seniors Maggie Sommers and Lauren Delaunay say they attended the rally to show their respect for Thorp.
Maggie Sommers and Lauren Delaunay:
I%20respect%20him%20for%20bringing%20light%20to%20those%20things%20and%20not%20trying%20to%20continue%20to%20like%20shove%20them%20under%20a%20carpet%20and%20for%20saying%20I%20know%20there%27s%20problems%20but%20we%27re%20going%20to%20address%20them%20no%20matter%20what%20that%20takes.
I respect them for bringing light to some of these issues and saying that we're going toward more transparency./And firing Butch. I think that was something that needed to be done. I think very few chancellors would've done that and he got a lot of criticism for that, but that was totally necessary in my mind.
Last year, Thorp fired the school's football coach, Butch Davis, after a series of issues involving problematic courses attended by many athletes. UNC system president Tom Ross says so far Thorp has not reconsidered his decision to return to his previous job at the university as a chemistry professor.