Following a tumultuous debate over the appropriateness of displaying a statue of a former Confederate soldier on a public university campus, administrators for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have ultimately decided to permanently remove the Silent Sam statue and associated monument stones from public viewing on campus.
In a press release to members of the UNC campus community, Chancellor Carol L. Folt announced her decision finally to remove all traces of the monument, citing her belief that its continued presence on campus was becoming detrimental to the learning environment for a number of students.
“The presence of the remaining parts of the monument on campus poses a continuing threat both to the personal safety and well-being of our community and to our ability to provide a stable, productive educational environment,” Folt wrote. “No one learns at their best when they feel unsafe.”
Last summer, the Silent Sam statue was vandalized and toppled over following a large-scale protest by students and members of the UNC community who did not feel it was appropriate to display such a memorial on campus. In response, the statue had been removed from its initial spot and moved to an unknown location on campus to prevent further vandalism.
Even after the statue was finally hidden from public viewing, a number of students still expressed concern over the continued presence of the pedestal that the statue once stood on, believing that the campus was somehow paying homage to the initial statue by allowing the pedestal to remain. Many of these students were further angered when university administrators proposed a solution that involved moving the historical statue to a newly constructed museum on campus that would contextualize UNC’s history and role in the Civil War, at a cost of $5 million dollars.
The debate reached a tipping point last semester, however, when a large number of graduate student instructors threatened to withhold thousands of student grades if the university did not agree to permanently remove the controversial statue from campus. In response, the university backed away from its plan to create a museum and now appears poised to remove all traces of the Silent Sam statue.
In announcing the plan on Monday, Folt also announced her plan to resign at the end of the academic year. By Tuesday morning, it was decided during a Board of Governors meeting that she would resign effective Jan. 31.
John Patrick (@john_pat_rick) is a graduate of Canisius College and Georgia Southern University. He interned for Red Alert Politics during the summer of 2012 and has continued to contribute regularly.
