Widespread graduate student advocacy, raising attention to impacts on security, health, and time-to-degree.

Undergraduate and Daily Tar Heel support, with coverage giving transparency to the day-to-day workload of graduate students and their personal and family lives.

1969: undergraduate Daily Tar Heel staff write "we think these requests [for a minimum stipend and that graduate student instructors not pay out-of-state tuition] are entirely reasonable."
1975: Chancellor Ferebee finds out about a budget failure and the non-payment of grad stipends via Daily Tar Heel coverage.
1989: Ruthie Warshenbrot for the DTH highlights that "graduate students teach 51 percent of UNC classes" while covering stipend competitiveness.
1991: DTH runs an entire article series called "The Grads Among Us", highlighting (non)competitiveness of stipends, national statistics, and personal experiences and workloads of various TAs and graduate student instructors.
2002-2004: As the tuition task force investigates the stipend and funding sources, the DTH collects and publishes data about graduate student instruction ratios, comparison to faculty workload and pay, and national context in collaboration with union data collection.

Professor advocacy highlighting the relationship of stipends to recruitment of the "best" student researchers.

1953: Dr. Kunstmann of Germanic Languages shares statement highlighting that stipends should now support the living costs of graduate students if a school wants to be able to get "the (best) students."

Departmental strategizing to protect graduate students in the face of funding cuts:

2008: Department of Sociology uses surplus budget funds from the previous year to protect 4 graduate students from recession budget slashes. (This would be impossible under the 2023 budget, where surplus funds are returned to a broader fund above individual departments.)

Interdisciplinary support, with better paid fields advocating for humanities students and others at the minimum stipend:

1988, Tomas Baer, DGS of Chemistry: "If they're [humanities stipends] not as high as what we pay, they should be. We couldn't operate with any less."

High-level administration that viewed themselves as collaborative with and advocates for graduate student stipends and well-being, with two axes of intervention:

(1) Forceful advocacy in the public eye and to the boards of governors and trustees:

1989, Provost O'Connor: "I support GSU [Graduate Students United and their pursuit of stipend increases] because graduate students are a critical, indeed essential, part of the twin missions of instruction and research at this university."

(2) Administrative labor at an accounting and fundraising level to develop strategies for increases using admin's professional expertise and fund contacts:

1982: Provost Charles Morrow characterizes the Carolina Challenge fund drive as the university's potential remedy to increase funds available for graduate student stipends.
1996: Administrative assistant to the dean of the graduate school states they are going to "the state," "donors," and trying "fundraising efforts" to begin the "long climb uphill to get [the stipend] to competitive levels."
2004: Board of Trustee's tuition advisory task force approves tuition increase with 48% earmarked for staff, faculty, and graduate student pay increases and the remainder dedicated to financial aid and graduate student tuition remission. (Tuition increases are restricted in 2023.)