Lottery ads and UNC
Another chapter (this one hopeful) in the squishy ethics of state-sponsored gambling:
UNC system president Erskine Bowles is right to decree that the N.C. Education Lottery should not advertise on UNC campuses.
"While it is legal for our students who are 18 or older to participate in the lottery, the lottery is nonetheless a form of gambling, and I feel strongly that we should not encourage gambling by our students," Bowles wrote in a May letter to the chancellors.
Amen to that. Ads for the lottery during broadcasts of Tar Heel basketball games last season always felt, well, sleazy and inappropriate.
Over the last nine months, the lottery spent more than $385,000 with seven UNC universities, including N.C. A&T. That spending consisted of radio ads, signs, check presentations and announcements during games.
Given the unsavory history of gambling and collegiate sports in the not-too-distant past, Bowles' policy should be iron-clad and unequivocal.