I felt the slow rise of heavy air as I walked across the UNC Wilmington campus earlier this week to attend the candlelight vigil for Charlie Kirk. As our footsteps fell on the freshly fallen pine needles, we watched as handshakes and loudness typically present in this location were replaced with solemn, knowing nods as the unspoken bond we were sharing began to set in.
People rolled in like waves approaching a shoreline as the crowd built and bunched closer and closer to the centerpiece on the stage at the bottom of the amphitheater, where Charlie’s smiling, friendly face appeared in a frame some undergrad had likely bought from HomeGoods earlier in the day.
We stood quietly in line to place roses around his picture, and as my turn approached to place a flower on the pile, I felt something inside. I didn’t know what it was at first and thought maybe it was nervousness or anxiety, for some reason. But as I dwelled on the feeling for a moment or so, I realized what it was.
Anger.
Rage consumed me as I held my 2-year-old grandson in my arms and looked at Charlie’s picture, thinking about how hard he worked to spread a message of faith and truth to our nation’s young people.
Charlie Kirk had a true calling, and he stood in the breach of a fight for the American soul, a fight for Western civilization, the primary battlefield taking place on college campuses in America.
His death should never have happened but was a predictable outcome from what we know has been the steady ascension of violence and censorship, along with tolerance of mob rule by campus administrations. And I thought about all of this as I stood there, looking at his picture in that frame, and I was mad as hell.
For too long, left-wing activists on many of America’s campuses were emboldened by weak and feckless leaders who allowed one-sided conversations to own public spaces, squelch opposing points of view and adversely possess the sacred right one has to express himself freely.
Conservative students feared reputational damage for expressing themselves, worried they would receive poor grades from liberal professors if they chose to go against the grain and, in some cases, feared for their safety as more students said it was OK with them to commit violence against someone with whom they disagreed.
But things started to change as Charlie, a new-age pioneer, blazed his way into the hearts and minds of a growing group of young people.
We remember last fall at UNC Chapel Hill when agitators tore down the American flag and replaced it with a Palestinian flag. Chancellor Lee Roberts, bravely and decisively, marched to the flagpole and returned our nation’s Stars and Stripes to its rightful place, and the “frat boys” took shifts over the ensuing days to protect it.
Conservative students have slowly begun to emerge from the shadows and speak up with more frequency, and a growing number of university leaders are supporting these efforts, and the tide has begun to turn. But much work remains to be done, as evidenced by what happened in the wake of the Kirk tribute at UNC Wilmington’s Spirit Rock.
Spirit Rock is located near the center of campus, and for spans of 24 hours, students are allowed to paint or write messages of their choosing. Last week, the Turning Point kids opted to honor Charlie Kirk with an inspiring American flag theme. Witnesses differ on when the painting began and ended and when the 24 hours expired, but what is not in dispute — because it was caught on video and seen by millions — was that left-wing agitators burst onto the scene, took control of the Rock and began dumping paint over Charlie’s face.
The female student depicted in the video, and her fellow agitators, could have waited their turn and ensured the 24-hour period had expired. Better yet, they could have waited a day or two to allow the Turning Point students to grieve and then move on.
Decency suggests they should have taken the latter course of action.
But they didn’t.
Instead, they acted with premeditated and deliberate actions to arrive when they did and cause a scene. They meant to be rude, uncivil and provoke the Turning Point students, and what the viewer sees on the video is appalling and disgraceful behavior.
But while the Spirit Rock incident is indicative of the depth of the problem, it also forebodes what I predict is an uprising among conservative youth.
Where once these types of actions went unaddressed and people just looked the other way, now a growing number of students — like these brave TP and College Republican kids — are saying “enough” and showing up with their own buckets of paint and their own messages, which infuriates those who have previously enjoyed a monopoly on campuses with regard to activities such as this.
As the video of the female agitator depicts her smearing blue paint all over the American flag, toward its end, the viewer hears in the female agitator’s voice what this really was all about.
“My friends … are going to think I’m iconic,” she said proudly.
I think she is right; she will be iconic, only I hope for reasons entirely different from what she thought when she uttered such narcissistic words.
Woody White is from Wilmington, a member of the UNC Board of Governors and a former North Carolina state senator.
