Meet Katherine Fitzgerald, the UNC alumna behind the viral tweet to donate to Flint

If you haven’t heard by now, the November 29th Duke vs. Michigan State men’s basketball game caused a stir on social media, and not because of player interaction. A Duke fan chose to create a rather insensitive sign in reference to the water crisis that is taking place in Flint, Michigan. In response to the sign, UNC graduate Katherine Fitzgerald pledged to donate money to the Community Fund of Greater Flint for each point Michigan State freshman Miles Bridges (a Flint native) scored. We reached out to Katherine to learn more about her thoughts on the sign and the impact of her tweet.

What were your first thoughts when you saw the Duke sign?

I was disgusted when I saw the sign. I’m all for snarky signs in general, but this was clearly too far. Flint had been on my mind more than usual because I had just seen a few stories of residents struggling to try to have a normal Thanksgiving when they still don’t have drinkable water. The one post that really stuck with me was someone sharing on Facebook, “In case anyone was curious, it took 166 bottles of water to make dinner.” 166 bottles is unfathomable, but it was also the “in case anyone was curious” that really dug at me. To feel failed by the government, forgotten by the country, and then have a sign at a college basketball game poking fun at it all? There’s nothing funny about that.

What encouraged you to challenge everyone to donate to Flint?

It just seemed so natural to me. Twitter was already condemning the sign for being wrong, but in the wake of stories about Thanksgiving from Flint residents, I wanted to take it a step further, and turn it into something right and something tangible. I had seen stuff all day on social media about how it was also Giving Tuesday, so I did some quick research. Not only was the Community Fund of Greater Flint doing continual great work there, they were also matching donations for the night. I love the UNC Twitter community, and knew a lot of people would be watching the game. So it was still obviously a terrible sign, but if there were an ideal time to flip it into something positive, it was Tuesday.

What did your donation challenge involve?

The donation challenge was simple – for each point that Miles Bridges, a MSU freshman from Flint, scored, I would donate to the Community Fund of Greater Flint.

What kind of reaction did you expect from others when you decided to donate to Flint? Has the response surprised you?

I figured a few other people would jump on board and we could get something going. Michael Hardison, the brains behind the @unc_humor account, is a good friend of mine, so I wasn’t too surprised when he shared it. But overall, I’ve been floored by the reaction and how far it’s reached. I had people sending me articles about it that I didn’t even know had been written. There were a bunch of people sharing it the next day as well, so I was thrilled to see it continue. So many of the people that I know from Carolina are dedicated to making the world a better place, so I wasn’t surprised on an individual level to see people jump in, but the overall effect of lots of people joining was definitely more than I expected.

Have you received any responses from Duke fans?

I’ve seen Duke fans sharing it as well and getting people on board. One Duke student mentioned that the Duke KVille group had a bunch of posts yelling at the guy who brought the sign. As much I am not a Duke fan, I don’t think this represents their entire fan base, and I would have had the same reaction if it had been a Carolina fan. The rivalry definitely helped people rally behind the cause and made this donation push more effective, but at the end of the day, I look at it as more of a right versus wrong, rather than a Carolina versus Duke.

Has Miles Bridges reached out to you? What would you tell him in regards to Flint?

I haven’t heard anything from Miles Bridges. I hope he knows from this that people still care about Flint.

What do you hope people take away from this challenge?

I hope one of the biggest takeaways is just that Flint still needs help, which is outrageous. The people of Flint have been without clean drinking water for nearly three years. For a state decision to keep people without a basic human right for this long is mind boggling to me. I am glad that I was able to help, and I’m glad that Carolina fans united for this. But at the end of the day, it should not have gotten to the point where my tweet or this rivalry mattered so much.

There have been people from Flint speaking out about this literally for years. A lot of us, myself certainly included, were able to forget about Flint when it wasn’t in the news, because it didn’t affect us or we just thought it would get better. It hasn’t. Again, I am 100% glad that this rivalry could turn something negative into something positive, but I think it’s important to ask why we may have been more motivated to donate in spite of Duke than solely to help out others in desperate need in the first place. And this is not to say that anyone who only donated tonight lacks compassion – it is just to drive the point that even now that this game is over, the sign is gone, and the tweet frenzy has died down, we cannot go back to forgetting about Flint. Our support can make the most substantial impact when we amplify voices that are already there.

While I hope that backlash on social media means that signs like this won’t show up in other places, if they do, I hope other fan bases can rally this way as well. There was a similar sign at a tailgate before the Ohio State-Michigan (football) game. Making caustic jokes about Flint is not an isolated incident at Duke, so I hope the reactionary donations and support of Flint will not be isolated either. This is so much bigger than any rivalry.

How can others get involved?

I hope people keep donating and keep the conversation about Flint going. It’s interesting with Twitter analytics, because I can see that more than 5,000 people saw the original Tweet, but only about 100 actually clicked the link to donate. It is definitely important to share, and I don’t want to negate that – I just hope people don’t stop there.

Someone on the Overheard at UNC Facebook page commented that this (donating to Flint) is the Carolina Way. Do you agree with that statement? What does the Carolina Way mean to you?

I think this is the Carolina Way, but I also think it’s bigger than just that. At Carolina, I found a tight-knit community unlike any other. I think that’s why everyone was quick to share it and turn it into something positive. For me, I feel my understanding of the Carolina Way came largely from my journalism classes, where I saw my peers invest in storytelling as a way to increase understanding, and from there, make an impact. It’s about reaching out to help your community whenever you can – in this case, just on a national level. So in that sense, it started with the Carolina Way, but I’m equally glad it spread outside of Chapel Hill and outside of the alumni community.

If there was one thing you could say to the Duke fan responsible for the sign, what would it be?

I’d rather him have to hear from the people in Flint. I think the only way someone can convince themselves to make a sign like this is when they forget or ignore that there are actual people suffering there. This is a real crisis, affecting real people.