By Clayton Margeson
Due to the new class numbering system adopted by UNC-Chapel Hill, sophomore and self-pronounced racist Todd Bastion was shocked and amazed when he walked into his first class on Monday morning.
He instantly discovered that it was not the HIST 875 he thought it to be. Rather than arriving in Southern History Through Bluegrass Music, he was in African Americans In American History In Africa, a class recommended only to serious African American history scholars.
"I really wasn't expecting this at all," Bastion said. "They were really black."
Bastion had toyed with the idea of merely dropping the course and trying to get a spot in the class BIO 188: How To Fertilize Your Tractor, but he was not entirely convinced that his opinions were unwanted in his current class.
"History is all about perspectives, and they're only giving perspectives from the slave point of view," Bastion said. "Don't they want to know what it was like for the Southern plantation owners after all those darkies got freed?"
It is unclear what Bastion's classmates think of his presence. Some were eager to hear his unique point of view, while others hurled his desk through a window.
On the first day, one classmate referred to him as "The Cracker," which Bastion adopted as his African name. He also has a multi-colored NASCAR hat which was described by one classmate as "Stank-ass," a term that Bastion does not claim to fully understand, but one which he now uses to describe his entire wardrobe.
Bastion believes the class is helping to broaden his horizons: "I'm really trying to get into their heads. For the first time, I'm watching BET without yelling more than a few racial slurs at the dancing girls."
While Bastion is doing well with the new class, the same can not be said for Jewish student Terry Goldstein, who tried to take the original African Americans In American History class. Goldstein wound up in a different class that shared the class's old number, the newly created Hist 992: What Hitler Did Right.