Rioters Encouraged to Apply? At UNC Law School, Yes.
UNC Law School Dean in 2021: “In America, no one is above the law”
UNC Law School that same year: Admitted a student with a lengthy rap sheet who was just arrested for domestic terrorism
In 2016, James Marsicano was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct during an anti-police protest.
In 2017, James Marsicano was arrested for “Resist, Obstruct and Delay and Trespass” at Charlotte Douglas Airport after a “skirmish” with police during an anti-Trump protest.
In 2020, James Marsicano was arrested and charged with assault on a government official, resisting a public officer, and disorderly conduct after engaging with a police officer during a George Floyd protest.
Despite the arrests, James Marsicano was accepted to the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law in 2021 – just months after the Dean of the UNC School of Law, Martin Brinkley, wrote that “no one is above the law.”
This past Sunday, less than two years later, James Marsicano was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism in an attack on a police training center in Atlanta.
Just months after Brinkley, the dean, made the media rounds condemning the January 6 violence and its fallout, how exactly can it be that an applicant with a lengthy rap sheet and a propensity for anarchy was admitted to Brinkley’s law school?
Student applicants and university faculty face the prospect of denied applications or stilted careers for merely writing things contrary to prevailing orthodoxy. (Read here about the UNC School of Medicine premising career advancement on social justice activism, and read here about NC State’s now-defunct requirement for student applicants to submit DEI statements). And UNC-Chapel Hill faculty are up in arms over a new school to teach civics.
Yet, somehow, prospective students who have been arrested for physical altercations with police officers are accepted in Brinkley’s law school without a second thought.
It cannot possibly be true that Brinkley believes “no one is above the law” and that the UNC School of Law, under Brinkley’s leadership, should admit a known rioter (and now alleged domestic terrorist).
There is something very, very wrong with the priorities here. If violence against American institutions and officers is a grave threat to a functioning republic (it is!), then violence against American institutions and officers is never acceptable no matter the reason.
Brinkley has some explaining to do.
