My column on the UNC system’s use of NC State’s embattled Free Expression Tunnel as a wedge to push for new hate-speech codes and the dream of diversity re-education systemwide was discussed on the blog StateFansNation.com, a site for alumni and fans of NC State athletics.

Not surprisingly, as their discussion shows, understood what UNC pretends to miss — that the Free Expression Tunnel offers a living monument to America’s revolutionary approach to free speech: let it remain free, and let offensive speech be defeated by more speech, not governmental tyranny. (That is so much more empowering than UNC’s maternalistic presumption that Oh! These top students in North Carolina, the poor poor dears, are dreadfully incapable of dealing with bad words, can never learn to deal with them, and therefore must be protected from them always!

My column concluded with the correct lesson for UNC to import from the Free Expression Tunnel; what I called NC State students’ “time-tested, well-practiced way of dealing with free expression that’s offensive: ignore it, drown it out, or just clown it on the side” (emphasis added). One poster (under the alias BJD95) provided the following example that illustrated my point perfectly. He wrote:

My favorite free expression tunnel story from my days was the long-running battle my freshman year between “Jesus Saves” and “Jesus Slaves.” Each graffiti artist would alter the others every night (I forget which came first), and this went on for about three or four weeks. Finally, somebody (presumably a neutral third party) stepped in and came up with “Jesus Shaves.” I suppose the dueling parties must have chuckled at themselves and decided to give it a rest, because “Shaves” stayed up for quite a while.