TO THE EDITOR:
The Facebook Group, “Overheard at UNC,” highlights interactions on and around UNC campus. You can always find the classics — Duke sucks, UNC rocks and “OMG there’s a sideways brick!” But the group has also served as a medium for discussion of controversial topics, including Title IX, sexual assault, racism and the Great Sex Doll Kerfuffle of 2013.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when a post was removed on Monday because it sought to bring up racism in UNC’s fraternity scene. The post was a screenshot of an email sent over an honor fraternity’s rush listserv. The screenshot was apparently of a “reply all” message that noted the lack of diversity appearing in a picture of the fraternity and praised this homogeneity. Unfortunately, I did not take note of which fraternity it was nor the exact details of the message before the administrator of the group removed the post.
I, along with multiple other group members, responded with cries of censorship. All of our complaints were removed from the page. I responded by posting a picture of a flyer from UNC’s celebration of First Amendment Day from 2013 and again stated my opposition to censorship. My post gained some attention before it was removed and I was booted from the group.
Overheard has served a valuable function by allowing students to discuss important issues and learn from each other in the process. But one must now wonder how many other productive dialogues have been squelched by the actions of a heavy-handed administrator.
Matthew Zipple ’15
Biology
Political science
