GOOD: Pauli Murray Hall
On Thursday, the UNC history department announced that its current home, Hamilton Hall, will be renamed after civil rights pioneer and lawyer Pauli Murray, who applied to the university almost a century ago and was turned down because she was Black. “Naming our building after Pauli Murray will serve as a reminder of what is lost, what could have been, and what can be as we move forward,” the statement announcing the change read. It’s a huge improvement over the building’s previous name—J.G. de Roulhac Hamilton was a white historian who credited the Ku Klux Klan with “restoring political power to the white race.” It’s also a positive development that came directly as a result of community activism. UNC ended its 16-year moratorium on renaming campus buildings after years of activism and a student-led petition that gained thousands of signatures.
BAD: McClatchy sale
McClatchy, the newspaper chain that owns The News & Observer, The Herald Sun, The Charlotte Observer, and major regional papers from Sacramento to Miami, accepted a bid from New Jersey-based hedge fund Chatham Asset Management at a bankruptcy auction. Chatham already controls most magazine distribution channels throughout the country through its American News Company, and this latest acquisition means that roughly a third of all newspapers nationwide will be controlled by financial institutions. It’s not the worst-case scenario: Alden Global Capital, which Vanity Fair has described as the “grim reaper of American newspapers,” also expressed interest in buying the chain before Chatham’s bid won out. It still means that the largest newspapers in the state—and indeed, the second-largest newspaper chain in the country—are now owned by the same hedge fund that owns The National Enquirer.
AWFUL: SCOTUS
Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, employers have been required to provide free contraception to those on employer-provided insurance plans. The Trump administration tried to circumvent that mandate by creating an exemption for employers with a “sincerely held religious or moral objection,” and the Supreme Court upheld that exemption in a 7–2 decision handed down last Wednesday. This new ruling could cause as many as 125,000 women to lose contraceptive coverage, according to figures presented by government officials during oral arguments.
Follow Editorial Assistant Cole Villena on Twitter or send an email to cvillena@indyweek.com.
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