UNC’s Campus Y reopens following protests. But its leaders worry about what’s next.

When the UNC-Chapel Hill Campus Y announced on social media that it had “been closed indefinitely” last week, outcry from the campus and the broader university community poured in immediately.

University administrators closed the building Tuesday, April 30 — the same day that 36 members of a pro-Palestinian “Gaza solidarity encampment” were charged with trespassing after they refused to comply with orders from police to disperse.

“This is absolutely insane,” read one Instagram comment about the closure. “As an alum who considered the Y a second home during my time at UNC, I cannot reiterate enough how detrimental this is for the student body. This is quite literally destroying any sense of community that many students have. It is not only affecting students and faculty, but also the greater Chapel Hill community that relies on organizations housed within the Y for resources and support.”

The Campus Y is widely known as a campus hub for student activism and social justice, with more than 30 student-run committees advancing a variety of causes. The organization — originally a YMCA — dates back more than 160 years at the university and is housed in the Campus Y building, which opened in 1907 at the north end of the Polk Place quad. The building offers meeting space for the organization’s committees, office space for full-time staff of the university’s Student Affairs division and a faculty work lounge.

In messages to campus, administrators stated that they closed the Campus Y for “safety reasons,” including doors to the building being propped open after-hours during the encampment.

The building reopened Monday, but is now operating under limited hours, closing at 5 p.m. each day. Administrators said Friday they would “continue to monitor” the space.

In a statement posted to the Campus Y organization’s Instagram account after administrators informed students of the building’s reopening, the organization’s executive board said they “are wary to call this a victory.”

“We are convinced that the attack on the Y has not ended,” the statement read.

Sari Ghirmay-Morgan, a student co-president of the organization, told The News & Observer Tuesday that the ordeal has been “extremely discouraging” — and, they believe, potentially only the beginning of an ongoing battle.

UNC Campus Y’s doors propped open

In statements about the Campus Y being closed, administrators stated the decision was made because, during the four-day encampment, the building’s doors had been “repeatedly propped open” during hours they should typically be locked, which is against university policy.

“Campus Y building hours were not observed and the doors were repeatedly propped open when the building was closed, despite multiple requests to ensure the doors were closed and locked, which posed a serious safety concern,” a university webpage regarding the protests states.

Ghirmay-Morgan said the building has generally remained open until 8 p.m., though some students were able to access the building after-hours by using their student ID cards.

“It’s been a pretty lax space, and students have been able to, essentially, come and go as they please as long as they have certain access to the building,” Ghirmay-Morgan said.

Ghirmay-Morgan said they “never saw” the doors to the Campus Y building being propped open during the encampment, but said demonstrators stored mutual aid supplies in the building. Ghirmay-Morgan was also aware that demonstrators had propped open other campus buildings around Polk Place after hours and during the weekend prior to the gathering being disbanded.

Academic buildings are typically locked after 7:30 p.m. on weeknights and over the weekends. The UNC Chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which initially organized the encampment to call on the university to divest from Israel, posted videos on its social media accounts of demonstrators being locked out of an academic building where protesters were using the restroom facilities. UNC interim Chancellor Lee Roberts and Chris Clemens, in their message announcing that the encampment would be disbanded, said protesters violated university policy by “trespassing into classroom buildings overnight.”

Beyond doors to the Campus Y being propped open, university administrators also cited a need to “clean the significant debris left behind” in the building and ensure that “that hallways, entrances and exits are clear” before it could be reopened.

In its statement about the “partial re-opening” of the building, the Campus Y executive board said the university’s description of the state of the building “does not reflect our recollection of how the space looked shortly before we lost building access.”

“There is no public evidence of such debris,” the statement read.

Building is reopened under limited hours

In the more than five days that the Campus Y building remained closed, more than 700 students, alumni and community members voiced their support of the student organization and called on the university to reopen the space.

The Campus Y building reopened Monday with new, limited hours: 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.

Ghirmay-Morgan said there has been “intense surveillance” of the building since it reopened, with a police car generally stationed nearby and new mobile security cameras, including one next door at South Building, which houses the chancellor’s office.

But the impacts of the university’s actions related to the building’s closure and partial re-opening are much broader, Ghirmay-Morgan said, noting that the events have “significantly decreased the capacity to provide for students.”

The limited building hours come during the final exam period, which prevents students from studying in the space and keeps Campus Y student groups from meeting there, as well. Ghirmay-Morgan noted that the Anne Queen Faculty Lounge inside the Campus Y is generally restricted from students before 5 p.m. With the limited hours, students are not able to access the space, which many groups normally choose to use because of its accessibility to those who use wheelchairs, Ghirmay-Morgan said.

“There’s a lot of traction in the Y after 5, especially for people who are working and organizing to make sure that we can provide services for our community,” Ghirmay-Morgan said.

The building’s limited hours also limit students’ access to resources within the Campus Y, including mutual aid items such as food and menstrual products, Ghirmay-Morgan said.

Renaming Student Affairs division of Campus Y

With the building reopened, the university is now appearing to draw clearer distinctions between the three key elements of the Campus Y, including a department of the university’s Student Affairs division, and where they receive funds.

A university website previously dedicated to the Campus Y — campusy.unc.edu — now redirects to a Student Affairs division page that states the name “Campus Y” no longer extends to the Student Affairs department. The department, which is responsible for fostering “student success through leadership development, student advisement and support and high-impact local and global programming,” is now called “UNC Y.”

The UNC Y lists five employees on its website, who are described as devoting their time to “the efficient operation of UNC Y efforts, guidance, and counseling for Y members and committees, training of officers and co-chairs in leadership skills and outreach to other units of UNC-Chapel Hill and the community.”

It is unclear exactly when the UNC Y received its new name, but the university states that all three elements were referred to under the Campus Y name “until early 2024.”

The remaining two elements of the Campus Y — the Campus Y student organization and the Campus Y building — retain their existing names. But the university is making clear that the student organization does not receive any state-appropriated funding.

“The Campus Y student organization funds its activities through private philanthropy, fundraising, undergraduate student senate fee allocations, and project-based grants,” the UNC Y website states.

Ghirmay-Morgan said administrators have been “harping on” the distinctions between the three elements for about the past two years. They noted that the increased emphasis on the separate elements comes amid legislation and policies around the country that have sought to prevent state funding from being used on university efforts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. The UNC System Board of Governors is expected to repeal its existing DEI policy and requirements later this month, which could result in DEI-related jobs and departments being cut or changed.

“I think that they are afraid that if people find out that their funding is going towards social justice avenues, that they will be extremely targeted, or that the GOP won’t like them anymore,” Ghirmay-Morgan said. “And so they’re making very distinct cuts between those three avenues.”

Ghirmay-Morgan said, based on their experience, the three elements of the Campus Y “have historically always been united” and functioned cohesively, without clear distinctions.

“There’s just so much interconnection between the department and the student organization, that the fact that they’re trying to make it seem as if we are two different entities is absurd to me,” Ghirmay-Morgan said. “It’s also absurd that they’re trying to isolate the building from this, because the building has always been the Campus Y’s building.”

Though the building is reopened, with impacts of the new UNC System policy and the continued fallout from campus protests remaining to be seen, Ghirmay-Morgan said it feels like the fate of the Campus Y is unsettled.

“It’s a very uncertain and difficult situation that we’re in,” Ghirmay-Morgan said, “and we are working to make ourselves resilient in times of uncertainty.”

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