UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser spoke with reporters Thursday
to answer questions about last week’s attack by Mohammad Reza
Taheri-azar, in which the former student drove an SUV into a crowd of
students near “The Pit,” injuring nine students. Moeser said it was not
up to the school to call the attack a terrorist attack, but that call
was up to the U.S. Attorney’s office. However later in the same
article, Moeser said”I agree, this could feel like terrorism, especially if you’re standing
in front of a Jeep that’s heading toward you trying to kill you. As we have investigated this, we’ve come more and more to
the conclusion that this was one individual acting alone in a criminal
act.”
I don’t need the U.S. Attorney’s office to tell me what I already know. This was an act of terrorism,
by one person who wanted to kill people in the name of Allah in order
to “punish the government of the United States.” It doesn’t get much
more clearer than that.
There is another point in the article
that also concerns me. According to the article, Moeser was in
Greensboro for a UNC-Chapel Hill women’s basketball game in the ACC
Tournament. “At the time of the attack, the chancellor was in Greensboro watching
the UNC-CH women’s basketball team in the ACC Tournament. He began to
get e-mail messages and calls on his cell phone. He said he was briefed
by campus police and student affairs administrators, then returned to
campus after the game.”
Why
didn’t Moeser leave the game and attend to his student body? When the
tragedy at Sago Mine in West Virginia took place in West Virginia in
January, Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, was in Atlanta, Ga., with the
West Virginia University football team as the team prepared for its
Sugar Bowl game against Georgia. Manchin, a WVU alumnus, left as news
began to break. I would argue that last week’s attack – whatever you
want to call it – was such that it should have demanded Moeser to leave
Greensboro and head back to Chapel Hill.
I don’t believe Moeser should get a free pass on that.
