TO THE EDITOR:
Steve Kirschner, our Director of Athletic Communications, yesterday admonished the Daily Tar Heel for publishing letters critical of Roy Williams. He argues that their actions “smear the reputation of the coach, program and university.”
If the allegations published are entirely false, then we would all be very grateful if Kirschner could disprove them. And if they are merely character attacks, then of course there is no point in engaging with them.
But to dismiss them without disproving them, and then to attack our student newspaper for daring to print them is a bizarre and severely misguided approach to university communications.
Our University’s reputation has been sullied not by this paper, but rather by an institutional failure of enormous proportions which administrators like Kirschner are yet to fully come to terms with.
Kirschner also attempts to paint The Daily Tar Heel as exploiting UNC Athletics for their own financial gain.
This is laughable. The Daily Tar Heel is a loss-making nonprofit organization which distributes a daily paper free of charge and does not receive any student fees. They sold commemorative issues for one single dollar each, when most of us would have paid anything to get our hands on one.
Kirschner ought to be able to recognize economic exploitation, given that he has worked for our Athletics Department since 1990. The irony here is that just this week The Daily Tar Heel published a front-page editorial criticizing the administration for their evasive and dishonest PR strategies. Perhaps it struck a nerve?
Harry Edwards
