Students trying to access the UNC-system Association of Student Governments’ website might start to notice something a little different.
ASG recently let their domain name, uncasg.org, expire — and it has been snatched up by UNC senior and Daily Tar Heel columnist Matt Leming.
Leming noticed the domain name had expired a couple of months ago when he tried to access the site but was redirected to register.com, the company that owns ASG’s domain name.
“I checked back a couple weeks later and saw that it was going up for auction in five days, so I placed an initial bid just to show that I was interested in the auction,” said Leming.
The auction was held last week, with 19 people participating. Leming decided to wait until the last five minutes to enter another bid and he won with a bid of $110.
“I didn’t actually expect it to work. I thought ASG would at least have someone in the auction making sure that it was ASG that won the auction,” said Leming.
Leming’s desire to buy ASG’s domain name stems from his dislike of the “useless organization”.
“I think that allowing your domain name to expire is the height of incompetence. When you have a statewide organization that is supposed to be representing students on the Board of Governors, you can at least expect them to keep their website running but they didn’t even manage to do that,” said Leming.
He sees his decision to buy the domain name and redirect it to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up as justified.
“I figured if an organization allowed itself to be put in a position where someone could snatch up their website domain name and allow it to be redirected to a Rickroll, it should be done,” said Leming.
Leming plans on moving the domain name over to a better service, but he hasn’t decided if he will sell it back to ASG.
“I haven’t decided yet if I’ll be willing to give it back to them, but if I were I wouldn’t charge them any more than I’ve ended up spending on it,” said Leming.
He still hasn’t been contacted by anyone from ASG. Former ASG president Alex Parker and newly sworn in President Zach King did not respond to emailed requests for comment this week.
Leming thinks his Rickroll is a good way to leave UNC.
“I thought it would be funny and I think it’s a pretty good senior prank."
state@dailytarheel.com
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