Letter to Wall Street Journal re BCC

Dear Editor,

Re your October 9 letter to the editor from University of North Carolina Student Body President John Moody, who claimed to represent majority student opinion on the Black Cultural Center issue: Not all of the story was told.

Mr. Moody was elected last spring by a bare majority of just 43 votes out of more than 3,000 cast. His victory was strongly aided by virtue of his being a white male member of the greek system, running against a liberal, Indian female student. She firmly supported the construction of a free-standing Black Cultural Center. Ironically, her narrow defeat can more accurately be traced to lackluster support among black students concerned she would not fight hard enough for the BCC, and not an outpouring of student opinion against its construction.

What Mr. Moody's election did illustrate is that student opinion at UNC-Chapel Hill is somewhat evenly divided over the BCC. More disturbingly, it showed the issue's potential to be exploited by self-serving politicians. Mr. Moody ran what many perceived to be a subtly racist campaign, using his stance against the BCC to foster division, not dialogue. Recently, North Carolina Lt. Gov. and current Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Gardner has seized on the BCC controversy in much the same way. Trailing in the polls, he has also taken an aggressive stand against the BCC, hoping to further politicize this campus issue by appealing to white North Carolinians' racial fears.

I am not one of the student activists who have dedicated their time to building a broad-based, multicultural student coalition in support of the BCC. I am an ordinary, run of the mill UNC-Chapel Hill student who happens to be white and progressive. I support construction of the BCC, and there are many others like me. My anger is reserved for those who would exploit this issue for personal political gain, and in doing so contribute to the racial divisions they so hypocritically profess to deplore.

Erik Ose, Senior, UNC-Chapel Hill
130 North Street
Chapel Hill, NC

(This letter was sent, but predictably, the right wing boneheads in charge of the WSJ's editorial page didn't publish it.)