The UNC Board of Trustees discussed the progress of the History Task Force at Wednesday’s committee meeting.

The History Task Force was created after the renaming of Saunders Hall to Carolina Hall in August of last year, with the propose of examining race and the history of the university.

There were tensions on campus when Carolina Hall was not renamed Hurston Hall, a name many students and faculty wanted, but this only gave the task force more of a purpose.

The task force is made up of facility and students, with a variety of views, said Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp.

“I had a number of people ask me, ahead of the first meeting, was I really nervous about it and was it going to stressful and even pugilistic but it hasn’t turn out to be that way at all,” said Crisp.

The Board of Trustee made the decision to rename Carolina Hall as well as create the task force and trustee Charles Duckett reaffirmed their commitment.

“This is something that is vitally important to this university, so that we understand every aspect of why and the history of, that’s inside and outside, and it’s going to take a long time and it’s going to take commitments by a lot of people and that’s what we are going to do,” said Duckett.

Their first big project is an exhibit inside Carolina Hall. The task force is currently considering design teams and deciding on content for the exhibit, which UNC history professor Jim Leloudis said requires some serious research.

“That’s meant a very deep dive into the university archives. We’ve tried to understand the full story of the naming of what’s now Carolina Hall,” said Leloudis.

The task force is also working on an inventory of everything that has been memorialized on campus, like monuments, buildings and scholarships.

“The important take away there is that this is the most heavily memorialized landscape in the state of North Carolina,” said Leloudis.

Working to tell a story about UNC that is over 200 years old; the History Task Force certainly has its work cut out for it.

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