Youth for Western Civilization (YWC) at the University of North Carolina has had to find a new faculty advisor to avoid losing school recognition for the third time this year. Sadly, students at many campuses struggle to be able to form student groups because of university policies prohibiting students from forming a group and advocating a cause without a faculty advisor.
Last spring large student protests led to the cancellation of a speech by YWC’s national chair, former Congressman Tom Tancredo. Shortly thereafter, the group’s faculty advisor stepped down citing concerns about Chapel Hill’s affiliation with the national Youth for Western Civilization. The group was able to secure retired Professor Elliot Cramer as a replacement, but last week UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp asked him to step down. Cramer had joked that he “own[s] a colt .45” and “know[s] how to use it." in an e-mail responding to protestors and potentially threatening flyers being distributed on campus.
Chapel Hill’s policy on recognized student organizations states, “Each officially recognized organization must have an advisor who is a full-time faculty or staff member of UNC Chapel Hill or the UNC Hospitals or extended the privileges thereof.” After losing their second advisor in a matter of months YWC had thirty days to find a new advisor or disband.
As the controversy has escalated in the local news and internet blogosphere, reporters and pundits have focused on the actions of student protestors, comments of the group’s president, and the appropriateness of Cramer’s joke. Yet, seemingly no one is exploring the underlying question—should students be required to obtain the approval of a faculty member to form an association and invite speakers to campus?
Faculty advisors can be useful in helping student groups accomplish their goals more effectively and maintain institutional memory. However, requiring an advisor makes students right to forming a group to advocate for their views contingent upon finding a faculty member willing to endorse their cause. Policies like the one at UNC not only make it more difficult for students to create opportunities for education and debate outside the classroom, but also put an unnecessary burden on students’ ability to express themselves. While faculty and administrators set the terms of education in the classroom, limiting campus discourse to ideas “approved of” by full time faculty serves to curtail the marketplace of ideas on the campus quad.
The current debacle at Chapel Hill is an unfortunate illustration of just how much of a barrier faculty approval can be to a politically charged and unpopular viewpoint entering campus discourse. Unfortunately it’s a barrier that has become all too common at universities and colleges around the country. The University of North Carolina would do well to take this as an opportunity to revise its policy and prevent this from happening again.
UNC-Organizational-Manual.doc