The Gang That Couldn’t Surveil Straight

It seems that the University of North Carolina under the stewardship of former Republican U. S. Secretary of Education (DOE) Margaret Spellings is developing a reputation for competence reminiscent of her tenure at DOE.

“One new development at the Confederate statue (aka Silent Sam) protest is about UNCCH using an undercover cop to infiltrate the protest and pretend to be a community member supporting the sit-in,” UNC professor Altha Carvey writes on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “His ‘police work’ came to light because he responded to the event where a person created a fire at Davie Poplar and he was wearing his UNCCH police uniform.”

“Maya Little, a graduate student in the history department, called out to him using his protester name ‘Victor,’ and he responded that his name was ‘Hector,’ not Victor. Many people involved in the sit-in (including myself) had conversations with Victor so he was apparently collecting information to discredit the protestors and the movement protesting the confederate statue (it is the only one on any of the UNC campuses and it is prominently placed at the entrance of campus). There are two videotape recordings of Hector’s interactions with students yesterday as they challenged him about his two names and his alter-identity. I think this is a concerning development on the UNCCH campus.”

To be fair to Madame Secretary, neither DOE nor UNC were remotely reputable when she took over. It is a bit reminiscent of a joke the late author M. Stanton Evans loved to tell: When a small town judge asked a drunk if he had anything to say for himself, the defendant replied, “Your honor, that bed was on fire when I got into it.”

Nevertheless, it appears that in the case of both DOE and UNC, the lady has been unable to turn those ships around, Herculean a task as that might be.

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