April Fool’s Day is a “holiday” that celebrates jokes and produces some clever headlines, and then everyone moves on with their lives. At UNC, however, it apparently also means administrative statements, promised “investigations,” profuse apologies, and urgent meetings about gags that were not meant to be taken seriously in the first place.
This April 1, UNC’s independent student newspaper, the Daily Tar Heel, released a few satirical headlines, throwing the campus into crisis. These fake articles poked fun at politics, campus life, and current events. The jokes were over the top on purpose, touching on things such as immigration policy, DEI, and even UNC basketball news
The most talked-about headlines included “UNC Brings Back DEI—for Whites” and “Trump Orders Alcohol Law Enforcement in Chapel Hill to be Replaced with ICE Agents.” The paper also pulled from local sports chatter, joking about recently fired UNC basketball coach Hubert Davis with the headline “Hubert Davis Rushes to Find Summer Internship.”
What followed was immediate outrage. Students, Chapel Hill locals, and even university administrators began weighing in with public statements. The Daily Tar Heel immediately caved, issuing multiple apologies. Going forward, the newspaper will provide DEI training for its editors and bring in a “professional advisor”—in other words, someone telling the formerly independent publication what to do. For a newspaper over a century old, this is a major step down.
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