On Monday, October, 14, 2019 conservative students at the University of North Carolina Charlotte placed a sign up on their campus warning about the dangers of socialism.
The “Socialism Graveyard” featured headstones that listed the body counts of various countries that experiment with socialism.
However, by the next morning, their exhibit was gone.
It still has yet to be determined who removed the display, as the Young Americans for Freedom club searched campus dumpsters and asked other students and staff about what possibly could have happened.
So far no one has confessed about what really happened to the display. However, the Young Americans for Freedom chairwoman Emma Schambach claimed that this display’s sudden disappearance was “definitely not an accident.”
The total cost for the display’s materials was about $70 and took four hours to create, according to Schambach.
She continued:
We were having some angry students coming up to us while we were setting the display up. And one of the women in the reservation office that I spoke to said, ‘Oh yeah, we had to take that down,’ but then everyone else said they weren’t sure what we were talking about and had us contact the custodian and also the video surveillance people. I’m waiting to hear back from them now.
Schambach then went on Facebook to express her anger with the situation:
So for people who say universities aren’t censoring free speech … Here’s a little bit of perspective. My club YAF spent our own money and hours to put together a Halloween display bringing attention to the dangers of Socialism. We put the display in the same location as we had previously displayed nearly 3,000 flags for 9/11. We put it up last night and by 10 AM this morning, students or administration had removed the display. We are going to get the bottom of this and are talking to school administration to resolve this issue. But just be aware, free speech is under attack.
When The College Fix asked campus spokeswoman Buffie Stephens about the situation, she responded by saying that the university “is committed to cultivating a campus environment in which our students, faculty, and staff are empowered to express competing ideas. Our vision and values promise a robust intellectual environment that values social and cultural diversity and free expression.”
“All spaces on campus must be reserved through the Conferences, Reservations and Event Services Office,” she continued. “Young Americans for Freedom did not reserve the space where their display was placed. However, CRES did not remove the display, and it is unclear who did so at this time.”
Schambach countered by pointing out that they’ve set up a display in that location before and had no problems.
“According to the student organization office we don’t have to have a permit in the area that we did the display because it’s a free speech campus,” Schambach told The Fix. “We had the 9/11 memorial there and had no issues, but the socialism display caused problems for some reason.”
“… We put the flags up and had no issues, some professors even commended us for the display,” she stated. “This set the precedent for us to place our socialism display in the same space without needing a permit. Other organizations also had their banners and signs displayed in the same area and these were left up.”
Another case of a university trying to stifle free speech, the University of North Carolina is demonstrating its negligence in matters of free speech protection. As the days go by, it becomes blatantly clear that university campuses favor leftist speech over right wing speech.
