News Release

CHAPEL HILL — A comic on "Coach Smite and the League of Super Dribblers" and a magazine ruled offensive and burned en masse are but two of the jewels in a new exhibition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Tar Heel Ink: Student Publications at UNC, 1844-2005," on display through June 3 in UNC’s Wilson Library, will open officially with a 5 p.m. reception on March 29.

At 6 p.m., UNC English professor Dr. Erika Lindemann will discuss "What Is a University? The Perspectives of UNC’s Antebellum Students," sharing from her review of letters and other writings by Carolina students before the Civil War. Her talk will be this year’s Gladys Coates University History Lecture at UNC.

Friends of the Library will sponsor the free, public programs.

Space available in the library’s North Carolina Collection Gallery didn’t come close to allowing the display of all 150 or so student publications over the years, said Linda Jacobson, assistant gallery keeper, who curated the exhibit. But the 37 yearbooks, magazines, newspapers and more do include copies of the first one, the University Magazine, started in 1844 and continued, under various names, for 100 years.

A 1969 humor magazine, Betelgeuse (pronounced "beetle juice"), contains the "Coach Smite" comic strip by the late Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jeff McNelly, a UNC alumnus.

"It’s a long satire of the basketball team," said Jacobson. Betelgeuse lasted only one issue.

The publications displayed range from The Left Heel, a leftist publication in the 1960s, to The Carolina Conservative, which challenged the "fallacious dogmas of the Liberal Left."

Controversies revisited include an investigation of UNC’s student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, under Charles Kuralt’s editorship and the burning of copies of The Carolina Buccaneer, a humor magazine started in 1924, which the administration and members of student government finally declared too offensive to continue. (Yes. There is a Carolina Buccaneer in the exhibit.)

The Daily Tar Heel, which celebrated its 112^th year last Feb. 23, figures prominently in "Tar Heel Ink" as the university’s longest running student-run publication. The display includes Kuralt’s 1954 campaign poster for the editorship, with a photo of him at that time.

"Through the years, the DTH attracted widespread attention for high quality and a policy of editorial freedom," Jacobson said.

"The DTH and many other student publications have been platforms for young writers and training grounds for aspiring editors, photographers and illustrators," she said. "These publications, ranging from humor to religion, also provide a glimpse into life on the UNC campus over generations and reveal the issues that students deemed important."

For more information or to schedule guided tours of the gallery and the exhibition, contact Jacobson at 962-1172 or ljacobso@email.unc.edu.

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Contacts: Liza Terll, 962-4207 or liza_terll@unc.edu; Linda Jacobson, 962-1172 or ljacobso@email.unc.edu

News Services contacts: Print, L.J. Toler, 962-8589; broadcast, Karen Moon, 962-9585