But let’s take a look at the Student Code, specifically Title V, Section 109, which reads

Funding decisions for programs, services, or events shall be made without regard to the viewpoints expressed.

According to Section 202, there are four criteria that “should be used in judging the worthiness of any group to receive funding.” Those are

A.  Representation.  SC should consider the  number of students affected  and  the  number of students involved in a project.  SC should try to anticipate this representation by looking  at past involvement, enthusiasm for the  program, current  opinions about  the  program, and  the  amount of involvement anticipated by the organization.

B. Vitality.   SC should consider how  vital  a program is to the organization.  Criteria to be considered should be the priority of the program in relation to other  programs sponsored by the organization,whether or not it is in part  a fundraising program, and  how it would affect the morale of the organization.

C. Specialization.  The Congress should consider how  unique a program is to the  Student Body. It should consider the cultural/educational value  of the program, whether or not it overlaps another program on campus, the amount of recognition it brings  to the University, and  the identification it has with the organization.

D.  Generated Funds, i.e. outside income.

Note that none of these criteria concern the political correctness of a group’s constitution (which, incidentally, must be submitted every year to the Division of Student Affairs for approval).

Now let’s turn to recent events. In the DTH article, Jared Simmons, Chair of the Finance Committee, says that “any uncertainty surrounding the group’s student organization status could give him authority to apply further scrutiny to their [Psalm 100's] requests.”  This “rule” cannot actually be found anywhere in the Code. Title V, Section 106 stipulates that only groups recognized by UNC’s Division of Student Affairs (which Psalm 100 is) may spend student government appropriations. Uncertainty about the group’s future status does not allow Congress to apply extra scrutiny to such groups’ funding requests. Especially considering that no official review of Psalm 100′s status has been announced, it might be prudent for the Finance Committee to refrain from apply “further scrutiny” until such time as Psalm 100′s recognition is actually revoked.

Apparently, some people are above the law

Equally troubling is the tendency for some members of Congress to openly flaunt the above-mentioned rules. Foremost among these is Leah Josephson, District 6 Representative. As you’ll see in the above screenshot, she has pledged “no more funding if i [sic] have anything to do with it.” While Ms. Josephson is entitled to her own opinion, as a member of Congress (and of the Finance Committee), she is required to abide by the funding standards set forth in the Code. Pledging to ensure that a group receives no funding because you disagree with their political/religious beliefs is expressly forbidden by the Code (in addition to the ethical concerns involved) and sets you up for nice, fat lawsuit when the group is denied funding.

While members of our august body may have differences in opinion over Psalm 100′s decision to expel one of its members, such differences in opinion do not allow Congress to cut off access to (or threaten to cut off access to) student government funds. Every student at this university pays into the student government funding pot, and every student at this university has a right to that funding, provided that the criteria set forth in the Code are met. Threatening to cut off access to these resources over political differences is just as bad as expelling someone from your group over political differences. To do so is not only unethical, it is illegal.

As UNC’s resident Robert Novak-in-training, I read with great amusement Mr. Clevinger’s letter criticizing my recent article on ASG in the Carolina Review. Given ASG’s past attempts to intimidate me into silence, it comes as no surprise that they would once again attempt to trample on my First Amendment rights. So, while Mr. Clevinger implores me to look at NC General Statues 84-4 and 84-5 (both of which only apply to me if I attempt to practice law), I implore him (and all the other officers of ASG) to read the First Amendment, which guarantees my right to criticize the organization, especially when its integrity is in question.

Me, in about 60 years

Further overlooking Mr. Clevinger’s failure to address any of my arguments about ASG’s suspect lobbying activities, he would do well to consult a dictionary before he writes his next letter. He accuses me of “defamation and slander,” whereas he should have accused me of defamation and libel, considering that my criticism was expressed in a written article. I’ll further note that Mr. Clevinger’s supposed “service” to students is neither requested nor appreciated. While I have no problem with people attempting to pad their law school applications, I have a problem when people do so with my money. But let me be clear, in spite of Mr. Clevinger’s blatant scare tactics, I will not be intimidated, I will not be silenced, and I will not back down.

I do believe that we are approaching this all the wrong way. Operating under the assumption that Krugman and Dupnik are right on this (i.e. Limbaugh and Palin cause acts of political violence), the Left thinks these acts of violence can be solved by silencing the Right. Given their very obvious failure to silence people like Limbaugh and Palin, I think the Left should engage in some self-censorship. Because if people like Krugman and Dupnik just shut up and went home to hide in their basements, Limbaugh and Palin would not have anyone to criticize. And if there was no one to criticize, to whom could Limbaugh and Palin direct their “irresponsible vitriol”? Since the Right is obviously too immature to engage in such self-censorship, the Left should take the moral high ground and just cede the country to the Right. There would be no more vitriol, no more political extremism, and no more political violence. As an added plus, the United States would also experience full-employment and unprecedented GDP growth. So the direction for the Left is clear: shut up and go home.

For those interested in the facts of the case, the final construction of the wall was completed last night around 8:00pm. The final size was about 6ft x 6ft. It was rather bulky and likely would have required at least two people to move. The wall was last seen at about 6:30am this morning by the morning shift for Rams’ Head Dining Hall. I discovered that the wall was missing at about 9:15am.

I think that this serves as a rather sad commentary on the state of political discourse at UNC. Can we not all acknowledge that the destruction of the Berlin Wall was a good thing, signaling the end of one of history’s most oppressive and totalitarian regimes? Can we not acknowledge that the world is a better place without the Soviet Union in it? Perhaps this is not even the issue. Perhaps the significance of the wall as the penultimate example of the failure of central planning, the misery that socialism inevitably entails, and the inability of centrally managed governments to provide even for the most basic needs of their citizens is the real problem here. Perhaps those who stole our wall are so blinded by ideology that they cannot even comprehend the walls that they have built within their own minds. But perhaps what is even more disturbing is that this university still cannot provide an environment where the free exchange of ideas is possible.

Until now. One of the groups criticized in the issue was Students for a Democratic Society (“Chapel Hill Hooligans Strike Again”, p. 21). Facebook photos obtained by the Carolina Review show Ben Carroll, the president of Students for a Democratic Society and write-in candidate for Mayor of Chapel Hill, along with Daily Tar Heel columnist Dominic Powell and a third individual, Scott Williams, standing in a pile of destroyed copies of the April 2009 issue of Carolina Review drinking beer and painting their living room. Hundreds of copies of Carolina Review (paid for by your student fee money) were apparently destroyed.

Considering the newsworthiness of this behavior by a candidate for public office, CRdaily is publishing some of the photographs below in order to inform our readers that a mayoral candidate is involved in destroying property, suppressing freedom of the press and censoring dissenting opinions.

These photographs also show how members of Students for a Democratic Society are engaged in a sustained effort to suppress the first amendment rights of those who they disagree with. Last spring, the engaged in violence for political ends against speakers whom they disagreed with. This fall, the Daily Tar Heel was targeted and vandalized with a “special anti-racist issue” placed over their papers. The DTH reacted strongly, even reportedly calling the police and attacked the vandals on their editorial page. Now, we have a staff member from the Daily Tar Heel apparently engaged in even worse behavior.

Update: The students involved have been informed that a complaint has been filed against them in the UNC Honor Court system. The student attorney general will decide by the end of next week whether to file formal charges.

Far Right: Ben Carroll, SDS president and candidate for mayor of Chapel Hill.
Center: Dominic Powell, DTH columnist.

This is just the latest in an ongoing feud between the Obama administration and the cable giant. Some claim the network revolt to be a huge victory for the press and a major embarrassment for the president. Others, however, have pointed to the pool’s contractual agreement in which all members must be invited for the pool to be interviewed.

Whether out of outrage or technicality, the media stood up for their counterpart, even though Fox is largely their nemesis. Whiny rhetoric about Fox News has been spewing from the White House since January, but attempting to keep out a representative of the most-watched news agency in the country is crossing the line.

The major networks put aside their ideological differences and behaved like Americans should on Thursday. Regardless of your views on the state of the nation or the opinions of certain political commentators, we should never wish to see a group of people silenced. Fox may not be as “fair and balanced” as they claim, but they undoubtedly deserve a place at the table.

The media has long been a check on government. This fact may not be supported by the Constitution, yet it is clear every time we turn on the television. It is the job of Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs and Rachel Maddow to be critical. People want to be alerted when their government is out-of-bounds. So when the Treasury tries to prohibit the press from holding them accountable, we should be appalled. Thankfully, other networks saw the injustices of such actions and responded accordingly.

I am reassured by this story; it makes me feel good deep down. This was not a question of the trivialities of health care or troop numbers in Afghanistan, but instead a direct attack on one of our most sacred rights: the ability to be informed. The people of the United States won here. We will not stand for this Nixon-like assault on our freedom. Let’s hope this sends a message all the way to Obama himself. Censorship has no place in America today.

Andrei Sakharov would know. He lived in a country where freedom of thought did not exist, and where the people had been infected by mass myths which were used to prop up a brutal dictatorship. His thoughts and speech were circulated in secret, for they were threatening to the official ideology. For his thoughts and speech, his career was ruined and he was arrested and exiled. Even when he returned from exile, his thoughts and speech were closely monitored and controlled.

According to Liberty University vice president of student affairs Mark Hine, “the Democratic party violates the school’s principles by supporting abortion, socialism and the “‘LGBT’ agenda,” referring to lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people” and that even though the group “may not support the more radical planks of the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party is still the parent organization of the club on campus.”

The group’s faculty sponsor has said that she was simply trying to allow alternative views to be heard on a campus where the Republican Party’s agenda is  “preached on every avenue.” The Liberty University College Republicans have a large presence on campus and have not been the target of any action from the administration.

Now, Liberty University is a private institution and as such they can deny recognition to whatever groups they wish. However, just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. If Liberty wants to suppress free speech and intellectual discourse on their campus, they can do that. But they are only hurting themselves.

As I wrote in an earlier post, allowing ideas to engage in free competition with each other will allow the best ideas to win out. Attempts to control the competition of ideas only make it appear that the controllers have something to hide. This only increases interest in whatever it is they are trying to suppress. It also lends less credibility to whatever ideas end up winning in Liberty’s competition of ideas. After all, a victor with no competition is no victor at all. And finally, students who are educated in an environment where only one viewpoint is presented are ill equipped to defend their views once they enter the real world.

Liberty is within its legal rights to ban the College Democrats club from campus, but by limiting the competition of ideas, Liberty is only hurting itself and its students.

When I got here, I found out that a large percentage of the student body at this university profess the Christian religion. There are a multitude of Christian religious groups with membership in the thousands. Most of my professors do not make mention of their religious or political views in class, and more than a few made positive references towards Christianity. Acts of moral depravity of all sorts were more often a product of the rumor mill, rather than something I witnessed firsthand.

It turns out, the rumor mill was what most people back home were going off of. The Sodom and Gomorrah, Bart Ehrman-will-turn-you-into-an-atheist-communist-hedonist mindset was nothing more than the prognostications of people who knew only of twisted second and third hand stories.

I’m proud to report that the University of North Carolina is in fact a place of healthy intellectualism. For every person taking a position on an issue (be it political, social or religious), there is likely to be someone to counter it. In this environment, both sides’ arguments are made better by the existence of opposition.

Rather than avoiding them, we should all listen to people who oppose our views, for the simple reason that competition breeds improvement. When our own ideas are challenged by conflicting ideas, our ideas are refined into something better. In other cases, our ideas are bad and they get tossed out.

This Darwinist competition of ideas breaks down when outside factors intervene to try and stop the competition. By and large, Carolina has been free of this. There have been some exceptions where one faction has attempted to shut down the voice of another. However, such examples as the controversy over Carolina Students for Life, SDS/YWC, or the Board of Election’s abuse of campaign laws have been the exceptions rather than the rule. By and large, the competition of ideas flows freely each day on campus. And I am thankful for that.

Now, many would say the state of morality in the United States is far below an acceptable standard. However, this has been true of every civilization throughout history. The fact is, people are less than perfect no matter where they are.  Human progress is an illusion. Hence, I am not going to single out the University as a place of exceptional immorality, because it does not appear to me that this university is any more or less moral that American society as a whole. The problem is not with this university’s administration or its student organizations, but with American society at large. America’s institutions are a reflection of its people. Any attempt to reform public morals by reforming university administration is like trying dam half a river. The current will still flow, it will just be re-directed slightly for a while and it will eventually erode the dam.

In short, our University is not an intellectual wasteland. Rather, it is a hotbead of intellectual discussion, which is exactly what a university should be. This competition of ideas can only benefit our society. If ideas are allowed to be expressed and evaluated freely, truth will come out on top. Like economic markets, this competition stops working when interlopers begin to fiddle with stuff in an attempt to engineer their own desired result. Attempts to control the competition of ideas usually backfire on whoever is attempting the controlling. People begin to wonder: What are they trying to hide? What are they afraid of?

Be they conservative Christians or anti-”hate speech” liberals, interlopers who attempt to control the competition of ideas not only produce unintended consequences, but they betray their own ideas. If they have faith in the truth of what they believe, the superiority of their ideas should be self-evident and they should not need to seek other means to ensure that their ideas are adopted.

Fortunately, although the competition of ideas is not flowing freely in many parts of the world, it is flowing much better at UNC than at most places. We have an atmosphere of exceptional intellectual vitality, and we should strive to keep it that way.

The complaint, which can be read in full here, alleges that campus police violently assaulted protesters, using physical force, tasers and pepper spray.

The incidents in question have been caught on videotape by a number of sources. In this ABC news clip, you can see protesters fighting with police while trying to break into the room in which Tancredo was speaking. No one was tased, and pepper spray was sprayed in the air. Police officers who were pepper sprayed as part of their training have informed me that anyone who was sprayed directly in the face with pepper spray would not have been getting up and walking out of the building.

In their complaint, SDS alleges that the police action was politically motivated. They argue that police action on Franklin Street after the national championship and the flash rave in Davis was far more lenient. Considering that no police officers were being attacked and no one was trying to disrupt a hosted speaker at these incidents, it is not surprising that more force was used in the protests.

Now let’s review what happened here. Students for a Democratic Society decided that some people did not have the right to free speech. They then decided to stop them from speaking. In the process, they assaulted police officers, disrupted a University function and smashed a window. As a result, one member of SDS, Haley Koch, was arrested for disorderly conduct. She is a Morehead-Cain scholar. She should be an outstanding example for all Carolina students. Instead, she has spent her time at UNC compiling a criminal record for a number of protests going back to last year’s sit-in at Chancellor Moeser’s office. As a result, she could lose her scholarship.

SDS was completely unapologetic about this. They proudly took credit for driving Tancredo off campus, and blamed campus police for “escalating the violence of the situation.”

The next week, unknown individuals aligned with the protesters defaced campus property with a number of obscene signs. Then, protesters tried to disrupt another speaker, former congressman Virgil Goode. Campus Police were more prepared this time, and as a result, six people were arrested. None of them were UNC students, however, SDS has stepped up to the plate to defend them, saying that the arrests were unwarranted. Campus police should pursue further investigations to try and discover if these individuals coordinated their activities with SDS.

Now, SDS has leveled unfounded claims of brutality at campus police. SDS is the organization which has organized the violent intimidation of speakers with whom they disagree. This alone should be enough to call into question the propriety of their continued existence as a recognized student organization. While claiming to defend tolerance, SDS showed themselves to be the most intolerant of all the actors in this cast of intolerant individuals. Youth for Western Civilization and SDS are both intolerant of people that are different than them, but SDS has taken this a step further to engaging in acts of violence against those with whom they disagree. By attacking free speech they have assaulted the very foundations of democracy. There is room for free speech on our campus. What we do not have room for is the violent suppression of alternative opinions.