News Release

CHAPEL HILL –  Members of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s 2007 Summer Reading Program Book Selection Committee have named “The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions,” by Sister Helen Prejean, as their choice for incoming undergraduates to read and discuss.

As part of its summer reading program, UNC asks all new students – expected to be 3,879 freshmen and transfer students this year – to read a book over the summer and come prepared to participate in small group discussions led by trained faculty and staff. The non-credit assignment, an academic icebreaker, is voluntary and strongly encouraged. Next fall’s discussion groups will be held Aug. 20; fall semester classes begin Aug. 21.

UNC’s program focuses on discussion and dialogue, not the book itself. The goal is to create an intellectual climate in which students can come to their own conclusions and turn information into insight.

“The Death of Innocents,” published in 2005, is Prejean’s nonfiction account of her relationships with two death-row convicts, their families and individuals on either side of the death-penalty debate during the time leading to the convicts’ executions.  Prejean maintains that both were wrongfully given the death penalty.

Prejean details the trial and execution, in 1999, of Dobie Gillis Williams, a black man from Louisiana with an IQ of 65, who was accused of rape and murder. She recounts the story of Joseph Roger O’Dell, executed in 1997 after a Virginia murder conviction, which she says might have been overturned by forensic evidence the state destroyed after the execution.

A Roman Catholic nun and anti death-penalty activist, Prejean has delivered hundreds of lectures nationwide and has appeared on television programs including ABC’s “World News Tonight,” CBS’s “60 Minutes,” and the syndicated “Oprah.” Her 1993 book, “Dead Man Walking,” about a presumably guilty death-row convict, was adapted to a film nominated for four Academy Awards in 1996.  

A nine-member book selection committee of students, faculty and staff began meeting in the fall to consider books for this year’s program. Members agreed on their final choice Monday evening (Jan. 22).

“This was the committee’s clear choice,” said Dr. Douglas G. Kelly, chairman of the selection committee and professor in the department of statistics and operations research. “Members praised it as a narrative that, while compelling and moving, is told calmly and with tolerance for all sides of the contentious issue of the death penalty in the United States.”

Of the five books that made it to the final round of the committee’s selection process, only “The Death of Innocents” was in the top three on every member’s list. Other finalists were “Honky” by Dalton Conley, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” by Michael Pollan, “The Wal-Mart Effect” by Charles Fishman, and “With These Hands: The Hidden World of Migrant Farmworkers Today” by Daniel Rothenberg.

“(‘The Death of Innocents’) raises critical issues that everyone should think about, including choice, trust, responsibility, justice, belief,” a staff member serving on the committee wrote in the recommendation. “It will take readers beyond their current selves.”

A student committee member wrote: “Prejean takes a strong stance against the death penalty but handles the opposing viewpoint with sensitivity and professionalism. Students on both sides of the argument will be forced to reevaluate and defend their ideology and will be empowered by Prejean’s characters.”

The selection committee started with 218 suggestions about books, types of books or general topics from members of the university community. Covering a diverse range of topics, authors and viewpoints, those suggestions included nominations and input from the university community that resulted from a campus-wide e-mail, online postings to the reading program Web page (www.unc.edu/srp/) and recommendations from alumni, members of the public and others that were sent to the chancellor’s office.

The committee’s criteria for selecting a book include finding a work that will be intellectually stimulating to entering freshmen and transfer students and will provoke thoughtful discussion. Other priorities are that the book should be engaging, relatively short and easy to read, and that it address a topic or theme that students can apply to their own lives, such as societal issues.

The reading program, now in its ninth year, was among recommendations from a 1997 faculty task force convened by the late Chancellor Michael Hooker to enhance UNC’s intellectual climate. Other recommendations implemented included a first-year seminar program, in which new students tackle academic subjects in depth for an entire semester with senior faculty, and an Office of Undergraduate Research.

Since 1999, the summer reading program choices have been “There Are No Children Here” by Alex Kotlowitz; “Confederates in the Attic” by Tony Horwitz; “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down” by Anne Fadiman; “Approaching the Qur’an” by Michael Sells; “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich; “Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point” by David Lipsky; “Blood Done Sign My Name” by Timothy B. Tyson; and “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri.

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Note:  Kelly can be reached at (919) 962-9609 or dgkelly@email.unc.edu.

News Services contact: Lisa Katz, (919) 962-2093, lisa_katz@unc.edu