Virginia Foxx Causes Indigestion at UNC

 

Since 1984, the UNC Board of Trustees (UNCBOT) has annually awarded its highest honor, the Davie Award, to "individuals who have shown extraordinary service to UNC or to society." Former recipients include Dean Smith, William Friday, the first president of the UNC System, and former UNC chancellor William Aycock. But this year, the mainly all-Republican UNCBOT awarded the Davie thingie to Rep. Virginia Foxx (and three other alumni). Granted, Foxx is a UNC graduate and also a full time black frost on spring flowers, so it's not surprising that students who know a little political history would object because of Foxx's character and her public deeds. The Davie Awards were handed out at a UNCBOT banquet back on November 6th, the day after the Election (Foxx must have been in a good mood, as her moods go), but the existence of student pushback didn't make the Daily Tar Heel until this week.

The DTH profiled Foxx quite accurately and with commendable restraint:

Foxx ... is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives for North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District and was elected in November to her 11th term in office. Last spring as the chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Foxx led the charge to investigate antisemitism at college campuses during Pro-Palestine protests .... Foxx ... has publicly expressed anti-LGBTQ+ stances, including opposing the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and speaking against the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision which legalized same-sex marriage. Additionally, Foxx voted against the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which aimed to federally formalize interracial and same-sex marriage rights.

That bio is guaranteed to bring on a gag reflex in the brighter students. The DTH reporter interviewed a couple of undergraduates who knew exactly who Virginia Foxx is, what she represents, and that she's led the current assault on free speech at universities. These students were unified in their opposition to giving the Davie Award to people who embody anything but the "values" that UNC has and should reflect -- inclusiveness, diversity, equity.

UNCBOT Chair John Preyer was evidently holding an unmelted pat of creamery butter on the back of his tongue when he lied to the DTH reporter that "the political leanings of the recipients do not factor in being given a Davie Award."