Country music artist John Rich said he is willing to play at a “rager” for members of a fraternity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“I reached out and I said, ‘Boys, I sure am proud of you. When you have that big rager you guys are talking about on GoFundMe, I’d like to show up and play you a free concert,’” Rich said on NewsNation’s “On Balance” with host Leland Vittert Thursday. “And they hit back, and I think we’re gonna try to make that happen.”
Members of the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity prevented an American flag from hitting the ground at a protest on campus on Tuesday.
The members could be seen in an a number of viral videos holding up the flag as activists threw things at them, resulting in a GoFundMe for the fraternity brothers called “Pi Kappa Phi Men Defended Their Flag. Throw ‘em a Rager,” which now has raised over $500,000.
“When I saw the guys at UNC, holding that flag up, making sure it did not hit the ground, it told me a lot about them,” Rich said.
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who has expressed his distaste for recent pro-Palestinian protests, donated $10,000 to the GoFundMe.
In recent weeks, protests have broken out on college campuses across the nation focused on Palestinian human rights and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war.
The protests have also faced accusations of antisemitism, which protesters have pushed back against.
“We are frustrated by media distractions focusing on inflammatory individuals who do not represent us,” Columbia protest leaders said in a statement last month. “Our members have been misidentified by a politically motivated mob.”
“We firmly reject any form of hate or bigotry and stand vigilant against non-students attempting to disrupt the solidarity being forged among students,” they continued. “Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Black and pro-Palestinian classmates and colleagues who represent the full diversity of our country.”
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