Compton resorted to cheap personal attacks in column

TO THE EDITOR:

The Daily Tar Heel recently ran a column by Matt Compton which inaccurately portrayed both College Republicans and me ("College Republicans become bit players in their own farce," Oct. 13).

While I respect the fact that Compton has the right to express whatever opinions he may have, I do not respect the inaccuracies which negatively reflect upon me.

It was my intention, when the flag burning incident occurred, that my name was to stay out of the headlines because I didn't want this to be about me at all. This should have remained solely about Kevin Sellers and the fact that he burned what turned out to be my property, an American flag.

My only association to the event was that it was my flag that was burned. However, if you read Compton's column, it seems I had more to do with it.

First of all, Compton wrote that I was staffing the table when the incident occurred. This was not true - in fact, I was not even standing near the table. I was walking out of Lenoir and stopped along the edge of the Pit to talk with a friend of mine.

From there I turned to see the flag grabbed and pulled down. After that, I walked to the table to find the edge of my flag burned. Compton also wrote that I "watched a man go to jail." Even figuratively speaking, this was inaccurate, as I did not watch him even get taken away.

Second, Compton talks about Sellers being charged with a felony. He focused on the fact that, if convicted, Sellers would lose the right to vote. This, of course, went in line with his criticism of College Republicans and I not caring about people voting.

Thus, it made sense for him to focus on this fact.

However, what was left out was the fact that Sellers admitted that his intention was to be arrested for this felony in order to make a political statement. It was not up to me, nor to College Republicans.

In fact, I was never even contacted on his behalf. We had planned to allow him to do community service as a way to avoid his felony, but of course this was left out by Compton.

Further, by implication, Compton tries to portray me and College Republicans as having the "victim" mentality. He says, "They play at martyrdom because that, more than anything, helps them achieve their goals."

This is unfair because we not only tried to help Sellers by being willing to get him community service instead of a felony, but we also were going to try and help him get back on his feet by trying to set him up with a job.

We did not politicize this issue - it was Compton who decided to make us seem like "martyrs" with his column.

Next, Compton goes into our efforts as Republicans to suppress the votes of others. He states, "For the CRs, apparently the goal of seeing every student vote in this election is not important."

What he failed to mention was that CRs not only registered people the entire time leading up to the deadline but also registered people from different parties.

Billy Constangy, in charge of voter registration for College Republicans, never even heard from VoteCarolina. However, Compton was under the impression that since we didn't have nonpartisan VoteCarolina tables set up, we somehow didn't care if people voted. In fact, he said, "They don't want to hear the other side - they want to drown it out."

Apparently, Compton views me as part of some mass conspiracy to keep people from voting. He lumps me into the group that "walked around with a siege mentality, hurling invective at anyone who disagrees with their message, prickling at every imagined slight, tilting against windmills and bogeymen more often than not."

He goes on to include me in the group whose attacks "aren't misguided - they're calculated."

Apparently, Compton got all of this about me from the simple fact that I bought a drink from Lenoir, walked outside to find my flag burned, and tried to talk calmly about the situation.

But after all, that was to be expected, because Compton's final words were: "I'm biased as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."

For what reason Compton decided to make an issue out of me having my flag burned, I cannot say.

What I do know is that it was unfair to characterize me in a false light.

I wish my name had never been released, but since that did happen, I can only set the record straight now.

Richard L Bean
Junior
Journalism

The length rule was waived.