Mike Walker, the Dean of Students at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, needs to resign immediately. Walker has the distinction of being the only dean of students in the nation to preside over a student affairs division that so egregiously violated student rights that the legislature has had to intervene on two separate occasions. I know this because I worked on both of those legislative bills that corrected unfair and unconstitutional practices here at UNCW. Despite all this, Walker is undermining a third more comprehensive piece of legislation I worked on with Rep. Chris Millis back in 2017. That bill was not specifically aimed at correcting abuses in Walker’s office. It was aimed at correcting abuses in the entire 17-campus UNC system. A little background information is in order.
When we passed HB527, a major objective was to rid the UNC system of unconstitutional speech codes and speech zones. But we also wanted to change the student culture and foster a greater understanding of core principles of free speech. Toward that end, the bill, which was based on a Goldwater Institute white paper, included the following language:
.png)
.png)
