Data: Is UNC still practicing affirmative action against white applicants? | Satanic murder cult? Raleigh Police nab would-be active shooter
No. 168 — Mar. 15-Mar. 21, 2026
I apologize for not including more content in this week’s issue, but the two major stories brought to you required a bit more research than usual to research and present.
Over at UNC-Chapel Hill, we compare whether the racial demographics of the classes admitted since the banning of affirmative action by the Supreme Court are truly reflective of the university dropping it’s racial preferences, or whether white applicants from across the state and nation are still being discriminated against.
In Raleigh, the mass shooting at Columbine which inspired an attempted copycat at Orange High School in 2006 is still having an impact two decades later, with police identifying and arresting a 19-year-old man who had indicated his intent to commit a racially-targeted active shooting. The would-be killer appears to be part of a growing online movement/subculture of “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” revolving around extreme violence, active shooters, white supremacy, and Satanism.
UNC still discriminating against white applicants?
How enrollment at Triangle colleges shifted after demise of affirmative action - N&O
Under affirmative action, highly-selective universities like UNC-Chapel Hill put their thumb on the admission scales based on the race of applicants, creating a higher academic standard for whites and Asians while lowering the bar for blacks and Hispanics.
In the wake of affirmative action being found unconstitutional in the landmark 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the racial makeup of American universities has shifted; but has affirmative action truly been abolished, or altered in its scope?
The demographics of post-SFFA enrollment alone may fail to answer that question, but we have special insight in the case of UNC-CH, as the twin Students for Fair Admissions v. UNC lawsuit contained detailed analysis estimating the results of a truly race-neutral admissions process on admission demographics.
According to the analysis of applicants between 2016-2021, in-state black applicants were up to 3.4x more likely to be admitted than their white peers, with an even bigger gap between between black and Asian applicants:
The racially-based gap in admission rates was even larger for out-of-state applicants, with black applicants being accepted at a rate more than 10x higher than whites for four out of the ten academic deciles:
The analysis estimated that without this obvious racial preference, the number of white and Asian admits would be 11.4% and 12.0% higher respectively, while the number of black and Hispanic admits would drop by 56.3% and 40.8%.
Post-SFFA UNC-CH admissions data
However, the demographics of new UNC-CH admits in the wake of SFFA and the adoption of a new non-discrimination policy by the Board of Trustees do not reflect the effect of adopting a race-neutral admissions calculated by Duke professor Peter Arcidiacono.
Although black enrollment did drop significantly, it did not due so to the extent indicated by the race-neutral estimate; Hispanic enrollment dropped only slightly (but recovered the next year), Asian enrollment increased slightly, and white enrollment decreased.
Which is more likely: that white applicants to UNC-CH dropped in average academic quality the same year that the university was forced to drop racial preferences, or that the university admissions ignored both the Supreme Court and the Board of Trustees to continue racial preference directly or by proxy?
Would-be active shooter copycat involuntarily committed by Raleigh Police
FBI charges Raleigh teen with Instagram mass shooting threats - N&O
Raleigh man obsessed with guns, death, arrested. FBI says he idolized mass shooters - WRAL
Raleigh teen involuntarily committed after FBI investigation finds concerning posts, purchase of AK-47, ammunition - CBS17
Earlier this month, Raleigh Police arrested and obtained involuntary commitment of a local man seemingly intent on following in the footsteps of the mass shooters he idolized, according to documents filed in federal court.
According an affidavit, the FBI Raleigh Joint Terrorism Task Force “became aware of concerning Instagram posts” made by the 19-year-old Eric Constantine Byrd on March 5. Four days later, Raleigh Police searched his home and arrested him after interviewing him at his place of work.
The search revealed a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm in Byrd’s closet; Byrd allegedly told the interviewing officers that if he had had ammunition for the firearm at the time, he “probably” would have killed his parents during a January incident in which they became concerned and called the police on him. (An email receipt shows Byrd ordered 1000 rounds of ammunition for the weapon in February.)
The “concerning Instagram posts” by Byrd in the days leading up to his arrest include one in which he stated his intention to livestream an active shooting targeting “yns” and “edgars,” slang terms referring to subdemographics of blacks and Hispanics respectively. Byrd also used racial slurs in reference to a black former classmate of his at LRHS (presumably Leesville Road High School) named “Isaiah” whom he also sought to murder.
Byrd has been charged with one count of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce to injure the person of another (18 U.S. Code § 875(c)), which carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment.
Satanic murder cults?
Although Byrd’s posts were classified as “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism (REMVE)” in the court filing, his associations and intentions seem to align more with “Nihilistic Violent Extremism.”
The posts and messages from Byrd included in the affidavit contain elements of both branches of NVE described in a recent Lawfare article, including an association with “online networks that combine white supremacy, Satanism, and misanthropy into a vicious and largely indiscriminate hatred that celebrates ritualized child sexual exploitation” as well as an online community which “glorifies school shooters, conducting deeply tactical investigations of prior acts of mass murder, and has encouraged new attacks.”
Byrd’s selected posts include:
references to Nazis, Hitler, and “#WHITEPOWER”
venerating previous NVE active shooters as “saint” or “saintess”
an intent to avoid a “boring suicide” by recording/livestreaming an active shooting
referring to himself as a “sadistic f--k” for his love of watching gore, self-mutilation, suicide, torture, and murder
associating his depraved prolicivities with “Lucifer”
associating his intent to commit suicide by mass shooting with a growing boredom of gore: “Nothing phases me any more”
references to other crimes such as “smashing people’s windows and taking their stuff out of their cars” and “ruining people’s lives by draining their bank accounts and selling their info”
The threat of an actual active shooting following this pattern of online behavior is very real, including shooters cited by Byrd as his role models such as the shooters at Abundant Life Christian School and Antioch High School, who were connected online, as well as the Christchurch mosque shooter, who has inspired a number of such killers. This line of active shooters and their acolytes can perhaps be traced back to the Columbine High School killers, with the Abundant Life shooter expressly referencing the pair in the manifesto attributed to her, as well as in clothing choice shared on social media.
In 2006, an 18-year-old graduate of Orange High School murdered his father before attempting to copycat the Columbine massacre at his alma mater, but only managed to wound two students before his gun jammed and he was subdued by a school resource officer. According to his defense, Alvaro Rafael Castillo had also developed an obsession with violence after being traumatized by exposure to pornography at the age of eight.
The crimes associated with these organizations/networks/ideologies are not limited to mass murder: Byrd also tagged posts with “#NOLIVESMATTER” in reference to the No Lives Matter movement, an offshoot of the Satanic/neo-Nazi sextortion network “764.”
Although no direct link seems to have been established to these specific groups, an example of the type of crime these networks are known for would be an incident involving a student at Athens Drive Magnet High School.
The student was part of a group chat on Discord, where another online user threatened to “SWAT” the student if the student didn’t carve the extortionist’s username into the student’s arm. The resulting follow-through on the threats resulted response by the Raleigh Police, twice to reports of violent crime at the student’s house and once to a report of an active shooting at the school.
A search warrant by the Raleigh Police revealed that these type of threats were not always ineffective, finding six photographs of individuals who had carved the name of the group chat or the extortionist into their arms or legs.
I recommend the following resources for more information on these specific linked groups, and NVE in general:
A report on the subject specifically relating to Byrd’s arrest - The Rabbit Hole: Saints and Killers (Court Watch)
For an independent investigator on the history and connections of “No Lives Matter” - The NLM and 764 Connection (Bx’s Substack)
A warning from the FBI - FBI Boston Warns of Nihilistic Violent Extremists Targeting Children and Vulnerable Victims Online (FBI Boston)