Sen. Marc Basnight, one of the most powerful politicians in North Carolina, visited Elon April 24 to share advice with students – “being responsible means being honest” – and to learn more about efforts on campus to help the environment and serve the Alamance County community.
Basnight, D-Manteo, who serves as president pro tempore in the North Carolina Senate, made his first trip ever to the Elon campus, spending time with students and faculty in both round table discussions and a question-and-answer period with students in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.
Students quizzed Basnight about the characteristics of a good leader, and they inquired about how he developed his effectiveness as a public servant. His answers included the following:
• “Being honest is so important, and never being disagreeable when you disagree with someone.”
• “I never felt that I was better than anyone else. Never. I can make myself worse – that’s easy.”
• “You want to be smart on an issue … You want to know the answer to a question before it is even presented.”
Basnight is an advocate for the public subsidies that help underwrite the attendance of North Carolina residents at private colleges and universities such as Elon. These funds accounted for over $4.1 million in tuition payments to Elon this year.
“Senator Basnight’s leadership in the Senate makes an Elon education affordable for students in North Carolina,” Elon President Leo M. Lambert said to Basnight at the end of an afternoon question-and-answer session with students in the business school. “That, quite frankly, would not be possible without everything you do.”
Basnight was accompanied by two close personal friends and colleagues. Sen. Tony Foriest of Burlington, N.C., represents Alamance and Caswell counties in the state Senate and, along with his wife, Clara, serves on Elon’s Board of Visitors.
Judge Richard Bray directs the Beazley Foundation of Portsmouth, Va. The foundation supports two endowed leadership scholarships at Elon.
Basnight’s afternoon appearance in the Koury Business Center was preceded earlier in the day by a round table talk with faculty, staff and students involved with environmental sustainability on campus.
He urged the group, which gathered in Studio B in the McEwen School of Communications, to make small changes in their lives that, taken together, can make a real impact on improving the planet.
“Our heritage and our history are so important to how we develop more than just our minds … but also to how we affect the land,” Basnight said. “We have to reverse much of what we’re doing.”
His remarks resonated well with the group.
“It’s encouraging to know he has faith in younger people when we’re often overlooked,” said sophomore Jackie Koehn, one of the five students to speak with Basnight about her efforts to encourage sustainability through a local church. “Most politicians don’t talk about the environment. It seems that’s his main platform.”