Since the 1980s, Technician editors have conspired to make fun of UNC-Chapel Hill and the town of Chapel Hill in the annual edition of the Daily Tar Hell, a satirical riff on The Daily Tar Heel, the student-run newspaper at UNC. Some years, the Tech guys pulled it off; others, it all fell through. The Tar Hell embodied the rivalry between the two schools, and though some of the snootier types may say that UNC-CH and N.C. State are not rivals, the storied history between the two universities goes back long before Chapel Hill and Duke’s.

My intentions of renewing the Tar Hell are not to be petty, but to revive the spirit that fuels rivalries. Along with the rest of the staff at Technician, I respect UNC-CH as an institution and our brothers and sisters in Chapel Hill. However, the occasion calls for a little bit of competition, silly antagonism and some good ol’ fooling around. Through the Tar Hell, I hope to poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of college life — not to victimize anyone or provoke outrage.

Before the N.C. State vs. UNC-CH football game last fall, Technician ran a guest column from UNC professor Stephen Leonard about athletic tribalism. He quoted late UNC System President Bill Friday, who said university leaders “don’t want their lifetimes to be measured by how much their [team] won or lost.” In effect, this extends to the academic integrity of universities, and our rivalry, and consequently the satire within the Tar Hell, boils down to sports, not academics. UNC-CH has been invaluable to North Carolina, and we at N.C. State value it as a peer institution and a healthy rival.

The provocative photos in today’s edition are not to incite detestation or to defame UNC, though some of you may be thinking that. In 1983, when our rivalry was at it’s highest, The Daily Tar Hell ran a photo of a semi-nude man, most likely a Technician editor, with Dean Smith’s “photoshopped” face. This silly tradition was continued for a decade. This year, we hope to reinstate that rivalry by bringing back that sort of ballsy cheekiness, literally.

Technician invites UNC students and the Daily Tar Heel to come up with a satirical way of getting back at us N.C. State. 

If you don’t enjoy the Tar Hell, I hope you at least don’t misinterpret the joke. And if you don’t get a kick out of the spoof, then you can drop me a line and send me a letter at editor@technicianonline.com.