What happens when several hundred copies of your conservative newspaper are stolen and six months later copies of that issue show up in pictures on Facebook?

Writers at the Carolina Review reported that a large number of their April 2009 issue were stolen from the campus library last spring. They suspected that the Students for the Democratic Society were behind it due to previous opposition that they had faced from the group. However, they had no conclusive proof, and the missing newspapers remained a mystery.

Until this week.

Several pictures of three male students painting their living room and drinking beer were published on Facebook. The problem? Copies of the April issue of the Carolina Review were covering the carpet, and the three people in the photo were Ben Carroll, president of the Students for a Democratic Society, Dominic Powell, columnist for the rival student paper, The Daily Tar Heel and a third student, Scott Williams.

Carolina Review members immediately filed a complaint with the UNC Honor Court, and the three students have been contacted to know that a complaint was filed against them.

According to the Carolina Review Daily:

These photographs also show how members of Students for a Democratic Society are engaged in a sustained effort to suppress the first amendment rights of those who they disagree with. Last spring, the engaged in violence for political ends against speakers whom they disagreed with. This fall, the Daily Tar Heel was targeted and vandalized with a “special anti-racist issue” placed over their papers. The DTH reacted strongly, even reportedly calling the police and attacked the vandals on their editorial page. Now, we have a staff member from the Daily Tar Heel apparently engaged in even worse behavior.

Stories like this are not uncommon for conservative student papers. Students at Oregon State University are currently engaged in a lawsuit after the university threw away their distribution bins. 

The Daily Tar Hill and the National Association of Scholars and Campus Reform's Tyler Millage also covered this story.