At the time of this writing I am coming at you as a former most-hated-student (a prize that most of our staff covets and has held for varying lengths of time). And, in my capacity as a former near-riot-starter, I feel equipped to touch on the subject that is playing through many of our minds tonight: what in tarnation happened? How did we arrive at the point where Bill O’Reilly is featuring UNC students on his number one rated talk show? Below I offer a brief history on an incident that I believe will be known infamously among proceeding generations of UNC students as he Bingham three incident.
Basically a student organization (an organization that the Review in no way endorses or allies with) organized an event in which the issue of illegal immigration would be discussed by a former United States congressman in the cramped auditorium of the dirty, old academic building of Bingham. A great majority of the students here at UNC, it seemed, immediately accused and assumed that one, the organization was a white supremacist front group, and two that the congressman was a racist, neither of which are founded from what I can tell. Posters were promptly put up the day before the event accusing the organization of white supremacy and the unproductive, riotous group of Students for a Democratic Society along with the ever involved feminists on campus schemed together a protest that had the intention of shutting down any discussion regarding illegal immigration. Oh so democratic of them.
At the event catchy chants were shouted, police were accosted, the congressman, the vice-president of the organization, and the president of the organization (that’s three) were harassed, a brick was thrown, property was damaged, a fire alarm was pulled, pepper-spray misted the air, and tasers were drawn.
Ultimately, the congressman was forced to leave, the privately funded money used to sponsor the event was wasted, and especially one student’s reputation was ruined, that of the president of the club that was responsible for this event. Further, the Bingham three incident was featured on one of the most successful blogs in America, the Drudge Report, the number one prime-time talk show host in America called us pinheads, and various other outlets such as the Huffington Post and CNN combined to make UNC look like one of Jesse Helm’s bad jokes.
The University’s response to all this was what now? To feature a “diverse response” to the Bingham three incident to which, apparantly, none of the Bingham three were invited. Thankfully, the president of the organization that brought the congressman to campus, whose good name has been unnecessarily ruined by this whole fiasco, was walking by after leaving a class and came to see what was going on. He was offered a chance to say what the students at this university did not allow him to say last night. Namely he said that he was not a racist. Otherwise, (excepting our own Anthony Dent’s magnificent attack on the very idea of “hate speech”), the “diverse response” featured boring, ridiculous admonishments to values that UNC doesn’t even believe in such as free speech (it’s called free-speech zones, people.)
It’s true that the university rejected SDS’s and the feminists’ use of violence and harassment. Whoop-di-do. Obviously those terrorists should have been repudiated. In the meantime, we still have student groups that actively promote infanticide, communism, child-rape, and racism (“reverse” of course, because that’s what is in style these days don’t you know) among other things. Fantastic. Maybe we are all just upset that the nation has seen us for who we are.
BRAVO! Kudos to you. So well said. Thank you!
“…Former most-hated-student (a prize that most of our staff covets and has held for varying lengths of time).” Haha! Well, that’s why I joined CAROLINA REVIEW, anyway.