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The Daily Tar Heel

Letter: Dinner didn’t exclude conservative voices

TO THE EDITOR:

It has been said that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” One such lie is that UNC’s administration deliberately excluded conservatives from a recent diversity dinner as a result of liberal bias.

In a comment on a Daily Tar Heel article, Frank Pray, the chairman of the College Republicans, wrote that he finds it “laughable” that his organization was not invited to this dinner, a snub which he characterized as an attempt to “blatantly leave out all student organizations that represent the conservative viewpoint.” The story was picked up by a national conservative blog, alleging “exclusion of conservative viewpoints.”

All these accounts conveniently leave out a crucial fact: no political organizations were invited to the dinner. 

Yes, the College Republicans were not invited. Neither were the Young Democrats, Campus BluePrint, the Roosevelt Institute, The Hill, J Street U, Students United for Reproductive Justice, Feminist Students United, Students for a Democratic Society, Student Power Union or the Sierra Student Coalition, just to name a few. Rather than a liberal conspiracy, this results from the fact that administration was presumably trying to meet with organizations that work on campus diversity, not campus politics.

In another comment, the chairman of College Republicans wrote: “If they don’t want to include the College Republicans, that’s fine so long as the Young Democrats are also excluded.”

Sadly, he failed to even verify this fact before attacking our university. Even sadder is that Chancellor Carol Folt has decided to gratify these attacks by meeting with him on Wednesday.

Tony Liu

President

UNC Young Democrats

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