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It’s been almost a month since an attacker horrified students at a UNC-Chapel Hill event hosted by Black student organizations on Aug. 31. The man used slurs and physical intimidation against students of color attending a “Love Island” watch party, sending campus into a panic.
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That month has exposed some crucial fault lines on UNC’s campus — communication, race, and safety chief among them.
Students of color who were there that night were shocked that no alert was issued on Alert Carolina, the school’s emergency notification platform, to give students an update on the situation. They were disappointed again when a formal meeting between the Black Student Organization Coalition and university leadership fell through.
The university held a meeting with the Black Student Movement on Sept. 9. A miscommunication led student leaders to believe another meeting would take place on Sept. 11 between the Black Student Organization Coalition and university leaders, but James Orr, senior vice provost for student success, called the proposed date “a typo,” according to emails obtained by The News & Observer.
For some Black students on campus, it’s a question of accountability.
“That incident directly attacked our sense of belonging as Black students on this campus,” Addison Truzy, a senior at Carolina. “The lack of acknowledgement in the university’s initial responses was really disappointing for me.”
“Being a college student, you live in a bubble,” Truzy continued. “This situation reminded me what the outside world is like. Hate still exists, and it can come in various formats.”
As a spokesperson for the Black Student Organization Coalition, Truzy feels that the university’s public messaging about the incident was delayed and inadequate.
And for Chancellor Lee Roberts, that’s the one major takeaway from this incident: the importance of communication.
“I can’t imagine how scary it must have been to be in that room and go through that incident,” Roberts told reporters during a UNC Board of Trustees meeting Thursday. “The lesson I learned is that we have to communicate as effectively as possible.”
Roberts has faced criticism over communication throughout his tenure as chancellor. And on Thursday, he revealed a conclusion he’s drawn from the many sticky situations he’s found himself in: “There is no optimal level of communication.”
Roberts drew an unlikely connection between the incident at the watch party and another event tied to race that rattled campus last spring: when the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, published a series of satirical articles for its April Fools edition that offended and astonished many across campus. In that case, the university reacted, announcing its condemnation of the articles, but was swiftly chastised by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
“We were accused of overreacting, and we got criticism from some national free speech groups,” Roberts said. “So we’re always trying to walk a line about effective communication.”
Roberts said that the university uses Alert Carolina when there is an ongoing threat: an active shooter or an incoming tornado, for example. Since UNC Police apprehended the suspect, UNC alumnus Keegan Carlisle Wilson, within 17 minutes, there was no ongoing threat. Wilson was committed to a mental hospital that night.
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But students didn’t know that.
The panic stretched far into the night as university channels remained quiet.
“The university says they didn’t send out an Alert Carolina because they determined that there was no ongoing threat to campus,” said Samuel Fuh, vice president of the UNC chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers.
“That in and of itself needed to be communicated.”
Even Rep. Valerie Foushee, a Democrat from Orange County, sent UNC-Chapel Hill a letter asking for more accountability surrounding the incident, asking specifically for information on plans for a more robust campus alert system. Roberts said on Thursday that he and Foushee have been engaged in a “productive dialogue.”
The incident at the watch party is part of a string of racially motivated harassment on UNC’s campus. On Aug. 29, Taiwanese students on a campus tour were reportedly targeted by a group of white men making crude gestures and sounds. In a separate incident, an antisemitic poster was found posted in the law school.
These events were discussed in a board of trustees committee meeting on Wednesday.
Roberts said they don’t know if the group of white men that targeted the Taiwanese tour group were students. Trustee Patrick Ballantine reacted in disbelief. Roberts responded that UNC does not have “some kind of facial recognition software that tells you who everybody is.”
Another trustee, Marty Kotis, suggested rapid drone deployment to help UNC Police track down perpetrators of crimes like the one that occurred at the watch party.
“I know the [police] chief has looked into [drones] for tracking something like that,” Kotis said. “The chief is working on several solutions. It’s always when something like this happens that everybody realizes it’s important.”
For some Black students at UNC, a successful university response would mean a restored sense of safety and belonging, according to Calaina Bailey, a Black junior at UNC and spokesperson for the Black Student Organization Coalition.
“This event, and all the things it encompassed, did take away that sense of belonging to be safe and feel safe on this campus,” said Bailey. “But we can organize, we can advocate for ourselves, and we do have the space at this university as long as we fight for it.”
That means remaining in conversation with the “high-powered individuals” at UNC, Bailey said.
“The hope for us,” Bailey said, “is to have a solid platform for the future of Carolina’s Black students.”
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