YWC’s adviser asked to resign

Youth for Western Civilization is once again fighting for its life against a deadline set by the University.

The conservative student group’s faculty adviser, Elliot Cramer, resigned Friday at the request of Chancellor Holden Thorp after he ended an e-mail correspondence related to YWC by joking about his gun marksmanship.

The e-mail came in response to brochures speaking out against the group. The home address of Cramer, a retired psychology professor, appears twice in the brochures.

Cramer had only officially been adviser for a week. Jon Curtis, associate director of organizations and activities, said the group will have 30 days to find a new faculty adviser, which is standard when a group loses its adviser.

“I’m contacting some professors who might be able to help,” said senior Nikhil Patel, president of UNC’s chapter of YWC.

YWC gained national attention and prompted a local debate on free speech this spring after it brought anti-immigration speakers to campus who were met with protests.

Astronomy professor Chris Clemens, the previous adviser, stepped down from the position this summer because of increased public scrutiny placed on the group.

The group found Cramer only a month before the deadline for student group registration.

At the time, Curtis said conservative groups have had a difficult time finding faculty advisers.

‘Highly inappropriate’

Patel sent an e-mail to Cramer last week once he learned of the brochures with Cramer’s address.

Cramer replied to the e-mail Friday, writing, “I have a Colt 45 and I know how to use it. I used to be able to hit a quarter at 50 feet 7 times out of 10.”

He also sent his response to Thorp and Haley Koch, a senior arrested in April for protesting a YWC speech. Her case was dismissed Monday.

Thorp then contacted Cramer and asked him to resign from the faculty adviser position. He said Cramer’s statement was “highly inappropriate and not consistent with the civil discourse we are trying to achieve.”

“He said it was a joke, and I said, ‘This just isn’t something we joke about,’” Thorp said in an interview.

Cramer said he also sent Thorp and Koch the e-mail because he wanted them to be aware of the brochures with his address. He stressed his comments about the gun were a joke.

“Oh, of course it was a joke,” Cramer said. “It’s one thing to say that they simply ought to contact me, but to put my address is an implied threat.”

Koch said she didn’t understand why Cramer’s gun comments were necessary to notify her of the brochures, and said she saw the e-mail as “very clearly a threat.”

Koch, who said she was not involved in producing the brochures, added she might have taken a different approach but still doesn’t think printing Cramer’s address was threatening.

“Finally I’m in agreement with something the chancellor did,” she said, adding that though Cramer had every right to make his comments, they were “totally inappropriate.”

Cramer, who has been retired for 15 years, said he no longer owns a Colt .45 but used to be a target shooter in college. He said he thinks he owns a .22-caliber.

YWC still plans to host former U.S. Treasurer Bay Buchanan in October, Patel said. Thorp offered to pay for the event as reimbursement for last April’s disrupted talk by Tom Tancredo, a former Congressman who came to speak about illegal immigration.

Although plans haven’t been finalized, Patel wrote in an e-mail he thinks he will ask Buchanan to focus her talk on free speech instead of immigration.


Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.