More UNC students dabbled in satire. The university is wrongly investigating | Opinion
“Hey guys, welcome back to my channel,” says the young blonde host as she stands on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. “Today I’m going to be taking a step outside of Granville and exploring a third-world country — South Campus.”
What follows is a satire of the genre of performative allyship that some refer to as “white lady liberalism.” Stacy continues, “The truth is, the people here are just like us. And I’m here to prove it. I just can’t wait to bask in their culture and in their struggle.” But just to be safe, she’s taking along two bodyguards, pepper spray, and a taser (as well as her vape).
When they get to South Campus, Stacy says she’s surprised to see it has roads and buildings. A black student recognizes Stacy and tries to give her a hug, but Stacy recoils and pretends not to know the girl. Stacy continues the tour — “This is where they play their games, such as basketball and futbol” — and introduces herself to a young Latino boy.
“Hi, my name’s Stacy. Staaacy. Me, Staaacy,” she says.
The boy looks at her like she’s a moron, and shakes his head. The joke is, unmistakably, at her expense.
On Monday, UNC’s student-run late-night variety show Hill After Hours released the Stacy sketch from its March 31 episode on TikTok. The TikTok quickly came under criticism, especially since it came shortly after student paper The Daily Tar Heel ran April Fools’ Day headlines claiming that Trump was sending ICE to police underage drinking, and that UNC was bringing back DEI (but only for whites). One black student, for example, filmed a response calling both the sketch and the headlines racially insensitive.
The Daily Tar Heel issued an apology and removed the headlines. But things took a turn when the university itself publicly condemned the articles and the video as “racist and insensitive.”
“Any content that demeans, harms, or contributes to an unwelcoming environment in our campus community is unacceptable,” wrote Senior Vice Provost James Orr. Orr did recognize that his office has no authority over The Daily Tar Heel, an independent newspaper, but called the satirical articles “highly inappropriate and offensive.” (The condemnation seems to have worked: afterwards, The Daily Tar Heel announced it was shelving satire for the rest of the semester.)
As for Hill After Hours, Orr said, “Student Affairs is investigating this incident to determine more information about how and by whom the video was authorized and produced.”
These remarks ignore UNC’s own free expression policies, state law obligations, and the First Amendment. Investigating a student group or condemning speech is not the role of a public university. Students and student journalists do not lose their First Amendment rights just because their speech is offensive or badly received.
In its Papish decision, the Supreme Court held that a student cartoon in a University of Missouri paper depicting police officers raping the Statue of Liberty was protected speech. “The mere dissemination of ideas,” the Court explained, however “offensive” to others, “may not be shut off in the name alone of ‘conventions of decency.’”
But that’s exactly what UNC is doing. Satire that others find offensive will continue to be shut off in the name of “decency” if the university doesn’t change course.
Constitutional law isn’t the university’s only concern. North Carolina state law requires the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina to “remain neutral, as an institution, on the political controversies of the day.” Institutional neutrality, as best described by the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, means that a university “is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” This creates space for individual and collective voices to flourish rather than chilling voices of opposition.
This law also says UNC system schools are only allowed to restrict student expression when “not protected by the First Amendment.” Both The Daily Tar Heel and Hill After Hours’ speech is protected — so UNC cannot restrict their expression, plain and simple.
Naturally, critics are free to answer The Daily Tar Heel‘s and Hill After Hours with more speech. They can even make their own content in response, as some students already have. But the school itself, as a public research university, is not free to answer such speech with actions designed to chill student expression.
Marie McMullan is Student Press Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), where she leads the Student Press Freedom Initiative.