DTH at a Glance: Football Friday

College football is very important to my family. I attended my first East Carolina ballgame when I was about a month old and kept going until I moved to Chapel Hill (much to the chagrin of my parents, who bleed purple and gold). I grew up on tailgates and losing my voice in the stands, and then on reading books in the stands for my angsty anti-football teenage years. 

My parents rep for ECU, but my family has college allegiances all over the state. That's why Friday's football game against N.C. State should be more divisive than political Thanksgiving discussions — I'm the only UNC fan/alum on my mom's side of the family, and my grandfather and aunt are both former Wolfpack members. So, I'll basically have just as much to prove as Larry Fedora on the Senior Day game, where he'll prove once and for all the legacy of his first recruiting class at UNC. 

— Rachel

QUICK HITS

• An N.C. General Assembly’s Program Evaluation Division study has revealed a disparity in funding between high- and low-income school districts. The state legislative committee intends to form a joint task force in response to the study.
  
• Something that's been steady in North Carolina schools (and across the nation) is an increase in bomb threats at schools. Twenty-six threats have been reported in North Carolina this year, and the U.S. has seen a 1,461 percent increase in bomb threats since November 2011.
• If you're already in Christmas mode, you would get along really well with about 90 percent of the DTH newsroom. To get in the spirit of things, Swerve has put together a holiday movie-watching list to put Freeform's "25 Days of Christmas" lineup to shame.
• But before Christmas is THANKSGIVING! We put together a list of alternative foods to eat on Thursday — if you're swapping turkey for tofu, I don't want to be invited to your house, but I do respect it.

IN CERTIFICATIONS

It's a Weiss! Same-sex couple Melissa and Meredith Weiss have agreed to a settlement with the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services that will let them amend their children's birth certificates to include both of their names. The settlement will set a precedent and represent progress for other same-sex North Carolina couples who adopted their children prior to the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state's marriage ban.

IN WILMINGTON WARZONES

UNC-Wilmington's chancellor has released a general statement regarding freedom of expression issues, indirectly addressing a conflict between a criminology professor and a queer Muslim student. The professor, Mike Adams, wrote a column following Donald Trump's campaign visit to the university about a Facebook post made by UNC-W student Nada Merghani. Merghani said the column, entitled "A 'Queer Muslim' Jihad?", outed her using her full name and resulted in death threats.

IN NOT CUTTING YOUR LOSSES

North Carolina's gubernatorial race is still contested almost two weeks after the election. Attorney General Roy Cooper currently leads incumbent Pat McCrory by 6,470 votes, but McCrory's campaign has kept investigations into voter fraud alive. This election is the first since a court ruling overturning North Carolina’s voter ID law. We examined the history of voter ID laws in North Carolina and how they've affected voter turnout throughout the years.