On April 1, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s campus newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, and its late-night show “Hill After Hours,” released a series of satirical yet offensive content for April Fool’s Day.
The Daily Tar Heel released a series of articles with the intention to “highlight the medium of satire, one that is grounded in centuries of journalistic tradition of holding structures of power accountable,” Alli Pardue, Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, wrote in the first of two apologies. “We intended to depict ‘moral outrage transformed into comic art.'”
The content itself, which has since been deleted, was egregious. Some of the articles included “The Daily Tar Heel Rebrands — now The Daily Woke Heel,” “UNC brings back DEI — for Whites” and “The new plan for the Dean Dome — a two-stadium solution.”
“The new plan for the Dean Dome — a two-stadium solution” was a spoof on Israel and Palestine’s “two-state solution.” The article included multiple “jokes,” including the university launching “a defensive strike against Duke University, firing 47 cruise missiles at Cameron Indoor Stadium.”
“UNC brings back DEI — for Whites” was supposed to be a commentary on the reversal of race-based admission protections, specifically the reversal of affirmative action. The article joked about the drop in minority admissions, instead flipping the script and mentioning a fake drop in admissions of white students. The article’s graphic also featured multiple white fists, mocking the Black power fist.
This is only a small piece of the offensive content mentioned in the edition, with additional articles like “Trump orders ALE in Chapel Hill to be replaced with ICE agents” and “Hubert Davis rushes to find summer internship,” mocking the university’s first Black head coach.
The newspaper released an initial apology just hours after the edition’s release. The editorial team claimed it hurt communities they “intended to uplift.” However, the second apology stated, “We were not thinking of how our audience would be impacted by the issues that don’t affect the majority of us.”
Also under fire is “Hill After Hours,” which produced a skit showcasing the “third world country” that is the “south campus.” Calling the south side of campus, known on Chapel Hill’s campus for housing minority students, “dangerous” and a “s— hole.”
The skit was hosted by "Stacie" and her two white male bodyguards, who racially profile a black female student, to whom the bodyguards escort away. Later, she greets a male student of color and asks if he “hable ingles.” She is also surprised to find that they have running and clear water.
The content has also been removed from official “Hill After Hours” platforms. “Hill After Hours,” founded in Fall 2025, is young. Yet, the idea that those who want to be professional comedians can’t actually make funny jokes is hilarious in itself. It's a concept that would have made a far better skit than what they published. Comparatively, The Daily Tar Heel started in 1893, leaving no excuse for its lack of an ethical and moral code.
This isn’t journalism. The fact that this bypassed a hierarchy of editors and included writing from the editor-in-chief shows that punching down on their audience was more important than journalistic integrity.
Make no mistake, the horror of the event wasn’t even using these topics as satire. Comedians and feature writers have done it for decades. The execution of the ideas leaves no doubt that the content is a mockery of the legacy of progress.
For this edition, Palestine and Israel were a joke. Students of color were a joke. There were even jokes about hiring multiple “DEI consultants” to “audit every single headline for harm, especially inflammatory ones like ‘Traffic blocks Franklin Street,’ which prompted dialogue on not misgendering vehicles.”
The idea that, in hindsight, there is now a goal to converse with student organizations to learn about their communities and how to report on topics for them, post-mocking bombings, shows that no one in that newsroom is ready to go into the journalism industry.
A past article from The Post detailed the current climate for Black journalists amid DEI pushbacks. Journalists of color, in general, are facing a myriad of setbacks. The Daily Tar Heel’s white student journalists may very well be our co-workers in the future; that’s terrifying. We have to trust their judgment and decisions in the newsroom, despite knowing their past.
Journalism has always been used as a way for minorities, particularly African-Americans, in this country to open doors and highlight the issues of their communities. The abolitionist movement was paved by hundreds of slave narrative essays, letting the world know of the atrocities brutalizing their people.
Narrative writing is a part of Black culture. Black reporters are the reason that movements like the Million Man March and the Selma to Montgomery marches are even recorded. To take the legacy of hundreds of years of pain and work done by journalists of an array of marginalized identities and use it as “satire” is insulting. As the products and upholders of those legacies, you insult us.
From both a professional and journalistic lens, we must weed out these “bad habits” to ensure their future participation in newsrooms is healthy. Student journalism is a learning stage, but we have to be critical so our profession isn’t a playpen.
We’d assume student journalists from a school with a 15% acceptance rate would have better critical thinking skills than to create, curate, film, edit and then publish their professional demise.
The lack of self-awareness, then the original lack of remorse, shows a bigotry and callousness that isn’t needed in the field of journalism, media or this country. This spans farther than political parties; this is basic human decency.
Nyla Gilbert is a junior studying journalism at Ohio University. Dawnelle Blake is a freshman studying journalism at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Nyla or Dawn about their column? Email them at ng972522@ohio.edu or db948724@ohio.edu.
