My entire childhood, I knew only two shades of blue: Tar Heel and Duke. I was born and raised in Chapel Hill. Each year, I walked around school for weeks, listening to my classmates scream at each other, debating the superiority of UNC-Chapel Hill or Duke. Once, I saw a third grader slap a peer across the face for claiming “UNC is pukey,” a clever retort to the original insult, created by the rival team: “Duke is puke.” Before we had even been taught the ABCs, we were taught which color blue to wear.
Even though I still don’t know the rules of basketball, I was a part of a Tar Heel family. It was practically against the law for me not to be a UNC-CH fan. When you grow up in Chapel Hill and are from a Tar Heel family, you already feel like a part of the team. Campus feels like an extension of home. I decided I wanted to attend UNC-Chapel Hill. I wanted to bleed Tar Heel blue, like so many others around me. It was my top choice school, and I knew I was going to get in. I was excited to go to games, just to sit in confusion and cheer when the others around me did. I was already a part of the team. It only made sense I would secure a spot.
The rejection email arrived about an hour before my high school’s talent show. I sat in the audience, commiserating with others whose destiny had been compromised. I glared in envy at those who had smiles on their faces, having donned their light blue T-shirts stamped with footprints in celebration.
A year and a half later, though, I am looking back on that day and feeling silly. I am realizing how odd the town’s worship of the university truly is. In the days following the rushed closure of UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus due to many students testing positive for COVID-19 in the wake of a botched reopening, I have been reflecting on my hometown and its central entity. College students are the center of our town’s economy. The rivalry between UNC-CH and Duke, and the worship of the place we at NC State have not-so-lovingly dubbed “The Blue School,” fuels business and serves as a free promotional device for UNC-CH. Almost every single person I know who lives in Chapel Hill and cheers for the Heels owns some form of paraphernalia.
Had UNC-Chapel Hill not opened its doors earlier this month, allowing students to move onto campus and attend in-person classes, it is likely there would have been many students who chose to take a gap semester or a gap year. Some students simply don’t care for online-only education, and having to enroll in a semester filled solely with online courses would be a deal-breaker. By the time the university chose to shift to online-only education and shut down on-campus housing, the deadline to receive a full refund for withdrawal had already lapsed. Students had become sick, and people had become angry. The rose-colored glasses through which people had once seen UNC-Chapel Hill were being lowered.
UNC-Chapel Hill is not different from any other for-profit business. The school has been in existence since 1789, according to the university’s website. In all that time, administrators have learned how to maximize profit while cutting costs, sometimes sacrificing student experience. Many other universities in our state have exhibited similar behavior in the wake of the pandemic, like when UNC-Greensboro added a clause into its housing agreement, refusing to issue student refunds in the event of COVID-19 housing closures.
NC State, too, is not immune from the power of fan culture. Members of the Wolfpack proudly declare superiority over either of the blue schools, wearing red and howling in the stands at games. But our own university is not without its shortcomings. Many Greek life houses at NC State have begun reporting clusters of COVID-19. After the shift to online-only education, Chancellor Randy Woodson placed blame largely on irresponsible students during a press conference, saying, “the behavior of the few has jeopardized the ability for us to go forward for all of our students.”
While students are certainly responsible for breaking Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines as they returned to campus, whether by attending parties or forgoing masks, it seems unlikely NC State did not see this coming. College students are notoriously irresponsible. Administrators know students; it is their job to know students and anticipate their needs. They can’t claim ignorance, even during a pandemic. All of us failed, the University included.
As students and prospective students, we cannot be bewitched by fan culture. For me, the spell I grew up under has finally broken, not only from seeing how UNC-Chapel Hill has handled the pandemic, but from watching my school as well, and any school that opened this fall and encouraged in-person classes, despite a consistent rise in cases across North Carolina. We need to recognize the shortfalls of our administrations and demand better from them. We are not dollar signs; we are human beings. We are not here to serve colleges; colleges are here to serve us. We are paying for their services, and, as a customer, I’m more than ready to leave a bad review.
