When the Pope Center released its study of tuition waivers given to graduates of the NC School of Science and Mathematics, the school’s president fired back in the Raleigh News & Observer. Now the Vice Chairman of NCSSM’s Board of Trustees has done so in the Greensboro News-Record. Bill Cary wrote there are “at least four good reasons that the General Assembly was right and Leef is wrong.” He detailed his belief that the waivers are justified based on students’ academic achievements, service to a diverse student population, maintaining competitiveness with overseas labor, and long-term return to the state. In Raleigh, News & Observer readers sounded off about the Pope Center report that criticized women’s studies programs at UNC schools. One writer took his beef further. A professor of Hispanic Studies at ECU wrote that the Center’s women’s studies report and Sen. Brock’s proposal for an Academic Bill of Rights were timed as part of a “Republican attack on academia.”