FOR "SENSITIVE ISSUES," READ "SACRED PRIORS."

It is the custom of college newspapers to recognize Conrail Day, er, sorry, April Fools' Day, for those of you in Cucamonga, with stories too crazy to be true.  For example, "NIU scraps Mountain West plans, pivots to Big Ten," which came with the disclaimer, "This story is entirely satire."

At the University of North Carolina, satirists offered, "Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents."

Editor's note: This article is satire. Happy April Fools' Day!

Last Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that he would be sending the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement to its next high-crime destination: Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Chapel Hill Chief of Police Celisa Lehew took to a press conference shortly after this announcement to confirm that ICE agents would be replacing North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement, effective immediately.

To defend the ever-so pressing need for ICE’s ubiquitous presence, Trump took to Truth Social.

“ICE has shown tremendous strength MAKING AMERICA SAFE!!!!” the president so professionally wrote. “Their recent work at the Olympics and TSA lines has protected our national security from the Criminal Illegal Aliens, but The Lunatic Radical Left in Chapel Hill must be stopped. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are war ravaged, and many people are saying ANTIFA is headquartered inside Cat’s Cradle.” He then shared an AI-generated video of a hipster firebombing Pantana Bob’s.

The foolery went beyond the newspaper, with Hill After Hours, a student organization that might be in the style of Saturday Night Live back when that show was fun, parodying an old-style National Geographic expedition.

The Daily Tar Heel parody ended with a serious dig at the Trump presidency.  "The Daily Tar Heel is now banned from the White House press pool but vows to continue to report on the ongoing situation." A disclaimer that something is satire, though, doesn't stay the Holy Inquisition.

The loudest campus voices were almost unanimously outraged at the satires, claiming that sensitive issues such as immigration enforcement, race, and class should not be satirized. Activist groups like Students United for Immigration Equality issued strongly worded petitions. Local media outlets like CBS17 and the News & Observer offered sympathetic coverage of the aggrieved.

UNC senior vice provost for student success James Orr—effectively the dean of student life—condemned the "racist and insensitive nature" of content that is "not consistent with [UNC’s] values as an institution" in a forceful April 6 statement. Orr, who called the content "completely unacceptable" and "deeply hurtful … to the well-being of our broader community," pointed out that the DTH is a private company and outside UNC’s jurisdiction. However, he pledged to "investigate" Hill After Hours, since it is an organization under university purview and to consider "next steps." Orr also said he is "deeply saddened" by the satires.

Apparently "this is satire" isn't enough any more, and "depends on the context" is a pass for some transgressions but not others.  Mr Orr's statement is not that of a defender of polite society or bourgeois norms, it is that of a cardinal archbishop pronouncing anathema on a heresy.  Nowhere in his "forceful statement" is there the sort of full-throated defense of free inquiry tempered by good manners.  Nor, I suspect, would he write "Students and student organizations are expected to conduct themselves in ways that respect the rights, dignity, worth, and freedom of others. Along with other members of our community, I am deeply saddened by the actions that have transpired" if the "actions that have transpired" involved fisticuffs at a Gaza encampment.

Is anyone surprised, dear readers, that higher education continues to shame normal people?  A statement I wrote a few years ago, "The only reason to criminalize dissent is that you can’t refute it," applies here.  Perhaps Mr Orr and his brain-brothers in Student Affairs ought be, oh, considering whether there might be a "root cause" (something that higher education types used to be all about) behind Militant Normal discontent, even in the relatively mild form of April Fool parodies.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression have a case running involving Chapel Hill, and perhaps redress will be coming.  Unfortunately, both Tar Heel staff and After Hours producers have reported for their struggle sessions.

Shouldn't it be Chapel Hill students putting Mr Orr in the dock?

But no, "UNC Newspaper Halts Satire and Implements DEI Training After Backlash Over April Fools' Issue."  That outcome does not please Reason's Meagan O'Rourke.

After Orr released the statement, The Daily Tar Heel editors issued a lengthy apology. The editors said the April Fools' Day edition was "a colossal, institutional failure." The editors added, "As a predominantly white newsroom with a documented history of harmful reporting, we should have been thinking more about the communities we serve. We were not thinking of how our audience would be impacted by the issues that don't affect the majority of us. There is no excuse for that."

The apology also listed several ways the paper plans to make amends, including keeping direct communication with the communities "hurt" by the paper, adding a professional news adviser, implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion training, conducting an internal and external review of how the satire edition was produced, and prohibiting any more satire articles for the remainder of the semester. In total, the letter uses variations of the word harm 14 times.

One would hope that The Daily Tar Heel would not have imposed these restrictions on itself independently, but by framing poorly received newspaper articles as acts of immense "harm" and declaring a moratorium on satire, the paper is stifling speech on campus, not encouraging it. Of course, as an independent paper, The Daily Tar Heel is within its rights to respond (or not respond) to student criticisms of its April Fools' issue however it chooses without university interference.

On Friday, the university told FIRE that the administration was not investigating Hill After Hours or The Daily Tar Heel and that it did not mean to "chill the free expression rights of our campus community." Clearly, the administration already has.

Well, no, the lengthy Washington Free Beacon report on the kerfuffle notes that the students involved are receiving threats of serious bodily harm, and the university administrators are unleashing their El Rukns with the usual mix of verbal and actual terrorism.

So far, 23 student organizations have signed onto a letter from Students United for Immigration Equality demanding that the DTH "confront the power and privilege they hold when writing and sharing their work" and "apologize and restore with impacted communities." SUIE declined to comment. A joint statement from several black student organizations at UNC said they were "disturbed" by the issue and that the articles are part of a trend of "student journalists marginalizing and denigrating minority communities on campus which has persisted for decades."

Students unaffiliated with activist groups also expressed disapproval, drawing parallels to the general distaste for satirizing the Holocaust. "ICE is straight up, like, Nazis, you know? I mean, like, no, but, like, if they were, like, 'Let's do a satire about having Nazis at He’s Not Here,' like, that's crazy," a UNC student and member of the campus comedy community told the Free Beacon. He’s Not Here, a legendary Chapel Hill bar, has been targeted, fined, and suspended by ALE over the years.

The public-facing response to the uproar from the DTH and Hill After Hours was nothing less than complete surrender: retraction, abject apologies, acknowledgments of privilege and promises to pursue self-betterment.

According to some students who spoke anonymously to the Free Beacon, many of the editors and producers from the DTH and Hill After Hours—who lean left—were shaken by the reaction and concerned they would face professional repercussions when applying for jobs in mainstream—and overwhelmingly liberal—media, or when applying to graduate or professional schools. They were also fearful of being boycotted or socially ostracized.

Put another way, they might have underestimated how humorless their classmates, particularly those of the verbal terrorist left, would be. Their statement of constructive self-criticism, to use the old Communist term, though, illustrates concept creep, e.g., "All satire pieces published on April 1 were initially labeled as “news” on the website. Later that day, we labeled them correctly as Opinion Desk satire stories after realizing the harm of the initial labels on our readers."  Oh, honestly.  Did anybody have a nervous breakdown after reading the story before the disclaimer went out?

George Orwell could not have satirized the full range of that confession, which notes how they failed to run their idea past their zampolit.  "Opinion editors and managing editors neglected to consult our DEI coordinator about these three pieces, which is contrary to the standard protocol for stories that impact marginalized communities."  Those satirists are so pathetic they deserve a failed scholar like James Orr bossing them around.

Perhaps in another year the Foundation will be able to report that North Carolina administrators have backed off on the censorship.  I will consider that money well spend.

Our universities are being run by terminally stupid people.

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