The 2020s marked a period of intense political unrest on university campuses across the United States. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, students emerged as powerful leaders demanding that the institution live up to its self-proclaimed identity as the “University of the People,” and fulfill its founding principals of bringing Lux et Libertas (“Light and Liberty”) to the North Carolina people.
This website asks how might we understand the student movements at UNC Chapel Hill in the 2020s for equity, racial integration, and anti colonialism in one cohesive narrative?
Through investigating this question, I aim to amplify the voices, frustrations, and visions of student activists at UNC-CH as well as preserve the memory of struggles often untold by mainstream media or erased from institutional archives.
This website includes four main portions:
- A collection of essays that centers student perspectives and preserves their struggles against the university’s enduring ties to systems of oppression, including its legacy of slavery and settler colonialism. I would recommend beginning with Note to the Reader and going in chronological order