Located on Airport Road, the Horney Building and its annex house physical plant and facilities support shops, offices, and work areas. Completed in 1962, it was named in honor of Giles Foushee Horney (1908—1986) in 1981. Horney, who worked for the university for forty-four years, served for twenty-nine years as superintendent of buildings and grounds. Horney was a champion for campus beautification and oversaw the installation of brick sidewalks in the 1950s.
The university-owned Horace Williams Airport closed in 2018 after eighty years of operation. It opened in 1928 when local contractor Charlie Lee Martindale purchased fifty acres from UNC professor Horace Williams and built a small airfield that came to be called the Chapel Hill Airport. Throughout the 1930s and early 1940s Carolina and Duke student pilots could be seen flying over Chapel Hill in Piper Cubs and other trainers, under a program sponsored by the federal Civil Aeronautics Agency. UNC bought the airport in 1940 when it received 870 adjacent acres through Williams's will. They renamed it for Horace Williams, who had been a popular professor of philosophy at Carolina from 1890 to 1940.
In 1942 Horace Williams Airport and UNC—Chapel Hill became one of five U.S. Navy pre-flight schools. By 1945 more than 18,000 cadets had trained there, including baseball great Ted Williams, Paul "Bear" Bryant, and future presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. The airport always saw a lot of activity around big sporting events. After the war the airport was a popular destination for private plane owners and visiting alumni. On the day of the 1948 UNC-Texas football game, ninety-seven planes used the airport.
Since the late 1960s, with the rapidly expanding Raleigh-Durham airport (RDU) nearby, university administrators and town leaders have frequently debated the necessity of having an airport in Chapel Hill. One of the most compelling arguments to leave the airport in place was its use by UNC—Chapel Hill doctors traveling around the state with the Area Health Education Centers (AHEC) program. The call to remove the airport was especially strong in the early 2000s as the university began planning for Carolina North, a major expansion of the campus to be built primarily on the land used by and surrounding the airport. In preparation to carry out that plan, the Chapel Hill Flying Club relocated to the airport in Sanford, North Carolina, and the AHEC air operations moved to RDU in 2007. Although those plans still remain on hold, the university finally closed the airport to air traffic in 2018, citing the cost to keep it open.
The university's intramural fields have been located along South Road across from the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery since the 1930s. The fields are used by students participating in intramural and club sports. To accommodate increasing demand for use of the fields, lights were added in the 1960s and artificial turf was installed in 2000.
The fields are named in honor of former chancellor Michael Hooker, who graduated from UNC—Chapel Hill in 1969 (a semester later than many of his classmates, after Hooker put off the then-required swim test until the last minute and failed on his first try). Hooker earned his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts and soon moved into higher education administration. He served as president of Bennington College and chancellor of the University of Maryland—Baltimore County and the University of Massachusetts system before returning to Carolina as chancellor in 1995. Hooker's tenure was marked by an emphasis on advancing technology on campus and a commitment to statewide service. While chancellor he visited all of North Carolina's 100 counties. Only forty-nine when he was named chancellor, Hooker was successful in connecting with students. He was a fixture at UNC sporting events and on several occasions crowd-surfed in the student section at men's basketball games. He was only a few years into his tenure as chancellor when he was diagnosed with leukemia. Hooker died in 1999.
Honors Carolina is a program of the College of Arts and Sciences for qualified undergraduate students that features courses, special events, and learning opportunities to enhance a student's degree work. Some students enter the program when they enter the university, and others apply at the end of their first year. Honors students must maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.000 or higher and complete a minimum number of honors credit hours by graduation in order to receive the "Honors Carolina Laureate" distinction on their transcript. Honors courses are open to all academically qualified students, although members of Honors Carolina receive priority registration. To graduate from the university with honors or highest honors, students must complete a senior thesis in their academic major.
The honors program began in 1954 for academically gifted freshmen. Over the years it expanded its scope to cover all undergraduates and a larger cohort, more programs, and more outside-the-classroom learning opportunities. The program renovated and moved into its current location in 2000 and changed its name to Honors Carolina in 2011.
The campus home for Honors Carolina is the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, located in Graham Memorial Hall. The center is named in recognition of the James M. Johnston Charitable Trust, which supported the 1999—2000 renovation of the building. Johnston was an alumnus who created the trust in his will. The trust has also made over $25 million in scholarships gifts to Carolina since 1967.
Through much of the nineteenth century, commencement served as a sort of unofficial homecoming for alumni. Former students often returned to participate in the ceremonies and connect with former classmates. The modern homecoming tradition began in the early twentieth century, coinciding with the rising popularity of intercollegiate sports. The University of Missouri is credited with starting the trend when it held a homecoming celebration in 1911 complete with pep rallies and a parade leading up to a football game. At UNC, the General Alumni Association worked to build a homecoming tradition. The first official homecoming weekend at Carolina came in 1923. Students began electing a homecoming king and queen in the 1930s and held a homecoming parade beginning in the 1950s (however, the homecoming parade was never as popular or as rowdy as the annual Beat Dook Parade).
The tradition of electing a homecoming queen evolved from a process that resembled a beauty pageant in the mid-twentieth century to a more democratic system in the 1970s. The changes resulted in both a more diverse group of winners and a number of challenges to a tradition that was increasingly seen as sexist and outdated. In 1975 students elected a male student, Delmar Williams. The athletic department threatened to cancel the ceremonies before reaching a compromise in which a female student was picked as honorary homecoming queen and Williams was honored as homecoming king. In 1976 student Sheri Parks was elected the first African American homecoming queen. By the 1980s the annual election was frequently used as a vehicle for pranks. Students ran a dog for homecoming queen in 1980 (she was eventually disqualified because the rules stated that the candidate had to be a currently enrolled student), and in 1983 students elected Steve Latham, who ran under the pseudonym "Yure Nmomma."
Despite changing student attitudes, homecoming continued to be a major event for alumni. The General Alumni Association expanded its programming, hosting large reunions for classes and for affinity groups such as Black Alumni Reunion, band members, and student government. Activities take place throughout what is now called Alumni Weekend.
In 2008 members of the Hindu YUVA (Youth for Unity, Virtues and Action) student group held the first on-campus celebration of the Hindu holiday Holi, the "festival of colors." The event expanded in 2009, bringing in more students for the traditional ceremony, during which participants showered each other with packets of colored powder. Sponsored by several South Asian student groups, the event quickly grew, with more than 2,000 students participating in 2016. During the chaotic celebration, clouds of colorful powder rise into the air and students emerge coated with different colors. The ceremony has moved around campus as it grew. It was held for several years on Polk Place before moving to Hooker Fields.
Completed in time for the fall 1967 semester, Hinton James was (and remains) UNC—Chapel Hill's largest residence hall. Housing close to 1,000 students, "HoJo" continued the 1960s trend of building high-rise dorms on South Campus. The dorm was the first to house both women and men when, in the fall of 1969, UNC began "Project Hinton," an experiment in coed living, with women occupying the top two floors of the dorm. By the 1970s Hinton James housed more African American students than any other campus dorm, leading to accusations that the university was enabling student "self-segregation."
The building is named for UNC's first student, Hinton James. A native of what is now Pender County, James arrived at newly established University of North Carolina on February 12, 1795. For two weeks he was the only student. He lived in Old East (the only building on campus at the time) and studied alongside the few other students who found their way to Chapel Hill. He graduated in 1798, one of seven members of the university's first graduating class. James had a successful career as an engineer and later as a politician, serving in the state legislature and as the mayor of Wilmington. The legend of Hinton James looms large not just because he was the first student but because of the way he got to campus. James is said to have walked all the way from his home, a journey of around 140 miles. There is no documentary evidence to support the idea that James walked, and one early account suggested that he came on horseback. Whether true or not, the story of Hinton James's long walk began to emerge in the early twentieth century and is now a common campus legend.
Date Established: 1966
Date Range: 1966 – Present
The first Jewish student organization at UNC was the Menorah Society, active in the 1910s and 1920s. The group was the center of a minor controversy when university president Frank Porter Graham offered the group space in the campus YMCA, despite objections from the YMCA national organization. The Menorah Society and its successor, the Carolina Jewish Society, were short-lived, most likely due to lack of interest from students. In 1935 students began advocating to open a chapter of the Hillel Foundation, the national Jewish student organization. One of the leading advocates was student Maurice Julian, who would later open Julian's clothing store on Franklin Street. The UNC chapter of the Hillel Foundation formally opened on October 9, 1936, with a ceremony attended by Frank Porter Graham. The rabbi who served as director had an office in the Campus Y and began offering religious services in Graham Memorial Hall. The group had a house on Rosemary Street in the 1940s before moving to its current location on Cameron Avenue in 1952. In 1966 the Hillel House hosted a speech by Frank Wilkinson, after he had been prohibited from speaking on campus under the state's Speaker Ban Law.
Hill Hall was completed in 1907 as a new library, replacing separate spaces for the libraries of the Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, and a small university collection. Its construction marked a step in the university's evolution into a research institution, based on the model of German universities that trained specialists as faculty and emphasized the discovery of new knowledge. Industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie provided the funds, with the requirement that the university match his gift to provide for upkeep and expansion. When it opened, the Carnegie Library Building, as it was originally called, had 45,822 volumes, with room to accommodate 200,000. The UNC Bureau of Extension and the University of North Carolina Press had its beginning in this building until they outgrew their space there. In 1930, following the completion of the new University Library (now Wilson Library), the Department of Music moved into the Carnegie Building. The department added an auditorium and an organ. Durham philanthropist John Sprunt Hill and his family funded the new construction and renovations, and the university renamed the building in their honor.
John Sprunt Hill was an 1889 university graduate who built a fortune in banking, insurance, and real estate. He served as a university trustee for many years. In addition to his support for the music department, Hill donated $5,000 to the library to be used for collecting historical and literary material about North Carolina, an enterprise now known as the North Carolina Collection. During the 1920s Hill built the Carolina Inn and later donated it to the university, stipulating that its profits support the North Carolina Collection.
After a major renovation, the auditorium reopened in 2017 as the James and Susan Moeser Auditorium. It was named in recognition of former chancellor James C. Moeser and his wife, Susan. Moeser, who was chancellor from 2000 to 2008, served in administrative positions at various universities and as chancellor at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. During his tenure at Carolina, Moeser oversaw campus-transforming construction funded through a bond referendum and the successful Carolina First fund-raising campaign; he also oversaw the creation of the Carolina Covenant. Susan Moeser is a member of the music department faculty. Both Moesers are concert organists.
Date Established: 1907
Date Range: 1907 – Present
In the early 1970s small groups of Carolina students began gathering at the bell tower at noon to smoke marijuana —they called it High Noon. The location was likely selected because of its central location and also due to the tall hedges that used to surround the bell tower. Their meetings were an open secret on campus and a source of concern for university officials. After the Daily Tar Heel and other statewide newspapers began writing about the gatherings, parents and others contacted the university to express their displeasure. The publicity led to more students participating, with as many as 300 joining in by early 1975. While there were no arrests, repeated threats by university administrators —including the use of photographers on top of Wilson Library taking pictures of the smokers —helped discourage most students from joining in, though smaller groups would continue to meet and smoke for many years.