Abolitionists Exposed in Asheville

In the Asheville (NC) Mountain XPress, Lara Terstenjak berates the Asheville City Council for not supporting her "Go Topless" movement for women, and somehow ties the City Council's decision to North Carolina's support for the Confederacy:

North Carolina contributed more soldiers (with gun rights) to the Confederate cause than any other state. I hope you do not continue to make the same relative mistake regarding women's rights.

Mistake? Gun rights? While reasonable minds may differ on the issue of topless women, surely Ms. Terstenjak understands that it was the Confederacy that fought to uphold a woman's right to ... to ... Well, what exactly does the Confederacy have to do with public nudity? Ms. Terstenjak says:

City Council members, your North Carolina predecessors voted to keep slavery. What could be more immoral than the buying and selling of human beings? Yet in 2012 you oppose women being topless on moral grounds.

Of course - it's all about slavery. The Confederacy was all about slavery. The Asheville City Council is enslaving women, not by requiring them to cover their breasts, but by encouraging others not to look!

We suspect Ms. Terstenjak will ultimately learn the hard way that there is no constitutional right to public nudity. At that time, we can suggest some appropriate attire for her exhibitionism.

Until then, if you'd like to educate Ms. Terstenjak, please respond with a letter to the editor at PO Box 144, Asheville NC 28802, via fax to (828) 251-1311, or via email to letters@mountainx.com.

"Studies" without Study

It's now clear that the University of North Carolina should be forced to forfeit its national basketball championships from 2005 and 2007, and probably even 1993. This is due to the latest revelations that the UNC Department of African and Afro-American Studies, since its inception, has been nothing more than a fraudulent shelter to keep athletes eligible.

And why is anyone surprised? Remember, the African and Afro-American Studies department was created in response to protests by UNC football players in 1992. (See Charlotte Observer, “Fight for Black Cultural Center Spills into UNC Stadiums,” 17 Sep 1992.) It's been all about athletics from the beginning, and any academic administrator worth his salt would have known that. While African and Afro-American Studies may be a worthwhile specialization for a few undergraduates majoring in Social Studies, it's hardly the sort of broad curriculum that can support an undergraduate major all by itself. Julius Peppers' transcript - loaded with courses like Black Nationalism, Black Experience (twice!), Blacks in Film, etc. - attests to that.

But the real tragedy here is not the fraudulent national championships won by the Tar Heels with their "student-athletes." It's the fact that the African and Afro-American Studies Department has been fully subsidized by North Carolina taxpayers - not just UNC athletics boosters. Meanwhile, real students in real academic disciplines at our state universities continue to suffer ever higher tuition payments to these "public" universities, who fritter away those tuition dollars on such complete wastes of time as African and Afro-American Studies and UNC basketball.