Marcella Middleton grew up in foster care in Colorado and North Carolina and was taken to therapists and put on medications at a young age. “A lot of people who really weren’t experienced were trying to diagnose me,” she told a town hall on the youth mental health crisis in Winston-Salem last week.

Last week, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services held its eighth in a series of state-wide town halls on mental health. Held in Winston-Salem, the discussion focused on the crisis in youth mental health apparent in North Carolina and across the nation.

Should students and faculty have more prominent voices on boards of trustees at UNC System schools? Should the system’s board of governors elect members geographically, be more transparent and open to public input? And will any of these suggestions matter to a Republican dominated legislature resistant to such changes? These were a few of the questions members of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina tackled in its third public listening session on Monday. The session, held at the Charlotte Area Chamber of Commerce, drew a sparse but vocal crowd – typical of the listening sessions held so far.

Like so many things, for good or ill, it started on Twitter. A whole host of political scientists from across the country had just seen 2019’s Avengers: Endgame and were discussing it online. But then, much of the world was. Upon release the film, a climactic point in the phenomenally successful Marvel Cinematic Universe of interconnected superhero films, had a worldwide opening of more than $1 billion. It would go on to become the then-highest grossing film of all time, making nearly $2.8 billion worldwide.

Last week Gallup released its latest study of how Americans identify their own sexuality. The result: 7.2% of US adults identified as LGBTQ in 2022, double the percentage who identified that way when Gallup began measuring a decade ago. Younger generations — millennials and adult members of Generation Z — were the most likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, pansexual or asexual, according to the study.

In their first public listening session Tuesday, members of the Governor’s Commission on the Governance of Public Universities in North Carolina outlined their mission and heard concerns from parents and faculty members from UNC-Wilmington. The meeting, held in Wilmington and live streamed online, was the first opportunity for the bi-partisan commission to hear from the public on its overall mission - examining the current appointment system for members of the UNC System board of governors and trustees at the 16 constituent campuses. The commission is also examining how that governance can better reflect the state’s ethnic, racial, gender, regional, economic and political diversity and working to craft a set of principles and responsibilities for university governance.

Last week, Policy Watch delved into the stories of LGBTQ youth as new bills legislating their education, healthcare and identities work their way through the North Carolina General Assembly. The bills are part of a continuing wave of hundreds of new anti-LGBTQ measures filed across the country in the new year, many targeting transgender young people.

When a federal District Court judge ruled last year the North Carolina State Health Plan’s exclusion of gender-affirming treatments for transgender people was discriminatory and unconstitutional, the state’s LGBTQ community celebrated victory in a legal fight it had been waging since 2019. But that decision is being revisited on appeal this month in a political environment in which conservative activists, politicians and lawmakers increasingly portray transgender people as mentally ill, those who support them as a threat to children, and doctors who treat them as “mutilators.”

Last week, Policy Watch examined the UNC System's $16.8 million 2023 budget request of the General Assembly -- money that would be sued to incentivize professors at five universities to retire. Among the drivers of that request is a drop in enrollment, due in part to years of lower birth rates. That impact is about to grow.