This work is not simply a list of names, dates, places, and obscure facts about North Carolina: It is an embodied telling that offers incisive critique.
After months of construction, the UNC Visitors Center held its grand opening on March 6, 2020. But the doors stayed open just a few days before the center was forced to close because of the pandemic. Visitors Center employees continued helping guests interested in exploring our campus on their own, but the center’s main purpose guided tours remained out of the question.
Until now.
The Visitors Center has converted its “Sense of Place” tour into a Zoom experience and everyone is welcome to sign up. “This is a way to get back to what we do but in the virtual space,” says Rhonda Hubbard Beatty, director of the Visitors Center.
“The Campus Y has a long history on our campus and has been home for students, faculty, staff and community members to promote social justice for generations of Tar Heels,” university officials said. “Hateful vandalism is not acceptable anywhere on our campus, but this breach of an established organization that promotes equality and justice is particularly egregious.”
The school has faced similar incidents in the past.
Two people were charged with vandalism and ethnic intimidation in April 2019 after officials said they defaced an art exhibit and the school’s Unsung Founders Memorial, a monument to people of color serving as a counterpoint to a toppled Confederate memorial. They were later found guilty of injury to real property and larceny, and sentenced to 200 hours of community service, 18 months of unsupervised probation and a $500 fine, The News & Observer reported.