UNC professor: Chancellor Roberts failed in a defining moment | Opinion
Lee Roberts’ failure
The writer is a UNC French professor.
History shows when university administrators bring in police, peaceful campus protests become violent and antagonisms escalate. On April 30, when interim Chancellor Lee Roberts unleashed police on UNC protesters, he revealed his indifference to this history.
It’s ironic that Roberts was placed on our campus as part of a plan to end the one-sided indoctrination the UNC System Board of Governors imagines a Chapel Hill education to be. He didn’t even try to understand the view of stateless persons and their allies, or their wish to temporarily see the flag of Palestine fly over campus.
By shaking hands with the fraternity brothers guarding the American flag, while flanked by police inflicting bodily injury on students, Roberts displayed his obstinate refusal to engage with the other side. He added insult by approving the suspension of student protesters. In what already looks like a defining moment of his chancellorship, he demonstrated the type of indoctrination he was supposedly hired to remedy.
Hassan Melehy, Chapel Hill
Kudos, chancellor
Kudos to the UNC-Chapel Hill interim chancellor and his decisive action to protect our state university from invasion by those with the misconception that freedom of speech means you can disrupt the business of education and take down our American flag. Intimidation of others can never be tolerated.
The erroneous thinking of the liberal faculty that they can withhold grades is unconscionable.
How quickly we forget that freedom is not free and how blessed by God we are.
Janice Putnam, Chapel Hill
Young protesters
Adults aged 18 to 22 can obtain top secret security clearance, get married, and choose their own religious beliefs. They can serve on a capital murder jury and help determine whether a defendant lives or dies. Yet somehow, when these same adults enroll in college, we stop believing they can think independently. As students, they are infantilized — accused of speaking out about important issues because it’s popular, as if protest were merely a fad, or because they were brainwashed into a particular point of view by “outsiders,” as if they had made no effort to learn about the issues themselves. How is it that we trust them with the full and profound responsibilities of adulthood while believing they have so little judgment?
Debbie Carraway, Raleigh
Lesson plans
Regarding “GOP lawmakers want to make NC public school teachers post all lesson plans online,” (May 3):
As a retired public schools educator, I can understand why the GOP wants to get its hands on public school teachers’ lesson plans. There are private schools and home schools that would love to have this tedious part of the education process done for them. But, in fairness to hardworking public school employees, “what is good for the goose is good for the gander.” If public school educators are required to post lesson plans, then the same should be required for every teacher who educates children in our state, whether at a private, religious, charter or home school. It would be interesting for parents to be able to evaluate the differences in the quality of plans submitted.
Carolyn Davis, Raleigh
NC surplus
I’ve let N.C. Senate leader Phil Berger, Speaker Tim Moore, Gov. Cooper and others know what I think they should do with that $1.4 billion budget surplus. They should allocate that surplus revenue to teachers, especially those with masters degrees.
Jack Williams, Cary
New abortion laws
Forced pregnancy is not saving lives, it is imperiling them.
Where are the laws that go along with lowering the abortion rate? Where are the free condoms, birth control pills, IUDs and other forms of birth control?
Due to overturning Roe v Wade, 24 states have restrictions that are causing some OB-GYN doctors to flee due to the pressure of huge fines and possible jail time. We must work to improve healthcare for women. This is America, the most envied country in the world — until the reversal of Roe v Wade.
Barbara Weber, Durham
