Story by Taylor Heeden
Graphic by Claire Willmschen
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina — On Valentine’s Day 1996, UNC student Aaron Nelson spent the entire day campaigning to become student body president. The winner of the election would be announced later that evening.
Nelson had been endorsed by the UNC College Republicans and the UNC Young Democrats in his student body presidential campaign. He ended up winning the student body president election in a landslide.
However, the evening after his huge victory, Nelson was approached by reporters at The Daily Tar Heel, asking about the theft of more than 1,500 copies of The Carolina Review, a conservative, student-run publication.
“There had been a conservative publication produced, distributed in the night, collected in the night and it’s whereabouts were unknown,” Nelson said in an interview now, 24 years later.
What students did not know at the time is how this incident would lead to a long lasting change in North Carolina policies, which in turn led to students and reporters to have more access to information than they did previously. This precedent was even used to resolve the 2016 lawsuit from The Daily Tar Heel regarding sexual assault prosecutions from UNC.
The controversy behind this edition of The Carolina Review stemmed from how the authors and publishers decided to depict Nelson. It included a depiction of Nelson with devil horns and a pitchfork on the cover, as well as attacking the candidate’s previous leadership record.
This depiction of Nelson was considered controversial and offensive, given the fact that Nelson himself is Jewish.
The Daily Tar Heel covered this incident, starting the day after the Student Body Elections by approaching Nelson about the incident.
Perel said the way the Review depicted Nelson as the devil was controversial because the student body candidate was Jewish. She said from what she can recall, that was the motivation for the Review vanishing from its stands.
“The copies of that magazine just disappeared off the racks,” she said. “The conspiracy theory was that Aaron’s frat brothers thought it was going to hurt him in the election and took the papers.”
The Daily Tar Heel confirmed this through first-hand accounts from student leadership, most notably from then student body president, Cal Cunningham. The now U.S. Senate candidate was the student body president when the theft took place.
Cunningham confirmed he walked in on a confrontation between the Review’s publisher, Charleton Allen, and about seven or eight Nelson supporters. He also was able to confirm these supporters were from Nelson’s fraternity.
This reporting also confirmed the stolen copies somehow ended up in the student attorney general’s office later that night or the next morning. How the copies ended up in the attorney general’s office is still unknown.
According to the Daily Tar Heel’s reporting, Cunningham knew there were no Reviews left in the room.
“As you know, student government is a very small world,” Perel said. “I don’t think it would be that hard to imagine how they had gotten into that office.”
Cunningham has not responded to requests for comment.
“One memory is that there was strong campus pushback on the publication,” Nelson said. “I do remember concern amongst my fraternity and the folks that were involved.”
After the campus wide theft of the Review, the Carolina Review was censured by the chancellor, and the faculty advisor for the Review resigned. In all of the stories covering the Review and its controversial content, Nelson said they all took sympathy with him.
“In all of those stories, it was that I was the one who had been done wrong,” Nelson said. “At the same time, The Daily Tar Heel was leading this effort to find out who had taken the publication.”
The Daily Tar Heel was able to pause the honor court proceedings regarding the theft of the Review, but the honor court still met in secret on the fifth floor of UNC Hospital. Erica Perel was an assistant editor for the student paper at the time when the Review was stolen and played an active part in advocating for policy changes.
“Our position was that should be tried in open court, not something that should be done in a secret honor court,” Perel said. “We started doing some lobbying for FERPA reform at that time.”
This led to The Daily Tar Heel filing an injunction, followed by an open meetings lawsuit. Perel said the staff at The Daily Tar Heel felt stealing something was not a matter of a student’s academic record, and therefore it would not be protected under FERPA.
This lawsuit ended up going up to the North Carolina Court of Appeals. This case set a precedent that allowed for the DTH to win a future lawsuit regarding sexual assault cases on UNC’s campus.
“The ruling was that the honor court and a ton of other committees at UNC were public bodies,” Perel said. “The decision was FERPA still allowed the honor court to meet secretly to do what they need to do, but that it was a public body.”
Perel said that because of the lawsuit that took place because of the case of the theft of the Carolina Review, The Daily Tar Heel can now report from these meetings and hold UNC accountable, changing the way it reported news forever.
“We felt and a lot of people felt at the time that the true intent of FERPA was not to let crimes be tried in secret,” Perel said. “That’s what I mean when I say it had long lasting effects.”
