While media reports focus on a controversial Chapel Hill law professor, little has been said about a much more important case in Wilmington.
RALEIGH — Welcome to Carolina Journal Online’s Friday Interview. Today the John Locke Foundation’s Donna Martinez discusses liberal bias in academia with Mike Adams, who teaches criminology at UNC-Wilmington and writes a popular column for TownHall.com. The interview aired on Carolina Journal Radio (click here to find the station near you).
CHAPEL HILL — Criminal background checks performed on a case-by-case basis are among the recommendations by a UNC system task force on campus safety issues. The 17-member Task Force on the Safety of the Campus Community made several recommendations in its report, which was released in mid-December. UNC President Molly Corbett Broad created the task force in June after the murders of two UNC-Wilmington students, Jessica Faulkner and Christen Naujoks. Faulkner and Naujoks were killed less than a month apart by students who had been admitted after concealing previous criminal convictions.
RALEIGH—For the second time in as many years, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stands accused of discrimination against a Christian student group. In December 2002, UNC-CH threatened to withdraw official recognition and benefits from the student group InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and other Christian student organizations, based upon the groups’ desire that their leadership adhere to the group’s religious beliefs, which UNC-CH argued ran afoul of its policy of nondiscrimination. National public outcry and the threat of a lawsuit prompted Chancellor James Moeser to issue a request to his staff “to allow IVCF to continue to operate as an officially recognized student organization.”
RALEIGH — For the second time in as many years, UNC-Chapel Hill stands accused of discrimination against a Christian group. In December 2002, UNC-CH threatened to withdraw official recognition from the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and other Christian student groups, based upon the latter’s desire that their leadership adhere to the group’s religious beliefs. A national outcry and the threat of a lawsuit prompted a change of policy. But now UNC-CH has derecognized the Alpha Iota Omega Christian fraternity, freezing its university account and web access and keeping it from reserving space on campus or using the activities office to manage privately raised funds.
CHAPEL HILL — In the span of a month, two killings have shocked the college community at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, leading to questions regarding the UNC system’s admission policies as well as campus security. In both cases, the accused murderers allegedly stalked their student victims before killing them. Also, both suspects were accused of lying on their college application in order to get into college. Both covered up their criminal histories in order to gain admission into UNCW. Like most campuses across the country, the UNCW asks its applicants about convinctions but performs no criminal background check.
RALEIGH — A student in Professor Elyse Crystall’s “Literature and Cultural Diversity” class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was accused of making “violent, heterosexist comments,” uttering “hate speech” and creating a “hostile environment” in class, according to an e-mail sent to all members of the class by the professor. What the student, identified as Tim, had done was answer the question posed by the day’s lecture, from his perspective as, in the professor’s description, a “white, heterosexual, christian male (sic).”
RALEIGH — On Nov. 10, the University of North Carolina at Wilmington derecognized the student group the College Republicans. The issue, according to the university, is discrimination — the university does not want student fees to go to student groups that will not include the university’s own antidiscrimination clauses in its bylaws. The issue, according to the CRs and the conservative group, Students for a Stronger UNCW, is their First Amendment protection of freedom of association as well as the equal protection of the law.
RALEIGH — A dispute over what a University of North Carolina at Wilmington professor said at a forum about the war in Iraq has led to a suit threatened against the student newspaper and also a student accused of libel. A student who attended the university-sponsored forum wrote a letter about it in the campus newspaper, criticizing the demeanor and comments of one of the faculty participants. After a lawsuit was threatened, the newspaper's student editor pulled the letter and another one about the event from the newspaper's website.
