It was an attempt at an April Fools joke. But last week’s edition of UNC’s student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, has highlighted a disconnect between the paper and the community it serves. And some people on campus say it reflects a larger disrespect of marginalized students at UNC.
At least three student editors at the DTH have resigned because of the April 1 edition and a related email blast. The publications were filled with satirical articles. One claimed that ICE agents were about to come to Chapel Hill. Another article said, “Hubert Davis rushes to find summer internship.” A third headline read, “UNC brings back DEI policies — for whites.”
We hear from Carolina Connection’s Henry Nicholls, who has been following the controversy. Then, we talk with Madison Mitchell and Dallia Lindell, the editors-in-chief of Black Ink, the official publication of the Black Student Body, which since 1969 has served as the voice of minority students at UNC.
Carolina Connection reached out via email, texts, and in-person to student editors and staff members of the Daily Tar Heel. They all either declined to comment or didn’t respond.
Carolina Connection is a student-led newscast, and some of its members have worked or currently work for the Daily Tar Heel, including Anthony Guerra-Flores and Andrew Sellers, who helped report this story.
I support a free speech media. Freedom of speech, in media, also means you are subject to the judgement of your readers. This event has not only, and not just, hurt some people’s feelings, but has also done harm to free speech in media. These jokes just aren’t funny, for one thing. A student run paper is for the benefit of every student, and a joke in said paper should be objectively funny, to any student. In the real world, you can publish anything you want, short of plans or formulas for harmful things, but the consumer, in a free society, will vote with his wallet. For another thing, a student paper is a laboratory. You didn’t buy the ink, or the pulp you are pressing it on. If this was chemistry, you just blew up the classroom. A ban on satire? Disaster. Now, you can’t even pluck the low hanging fruit. You could make (nearly) any joke you want about a president, but, a story mocking minorities, making them think a Gestapo is coming for them? What aspiring journalists would even think to perpetrate such… I don’t even have a word for it.
Cordially, a conservative, Christian, Trump supporting white male.