Companion bills were filed in North Carolina’s House and Senate by local Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday calling for the removal of the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam from the UNC – Chapel Hill campus.

The bills say that lawmakers find “it is necessary to permanently relocate the monument” from McCorkle Place into “a secure, indoor location.”

The monument – which was erected in 1913, according to the university’s website – has been a flashpoint of protest over the years. Protests calling for the statue’s removal have been consistent over the recently concluded academic year after a rally on August 22, marking the first day of the fall semester. In late April, a UNC graduate student was arrested for pouring a mixture of what she said was her own blood and red paint on the statute.

UNC Chancellor Carol Folt has said repeatedly that she would order the statue be moved, if she felt she had the authority to do so. But the chancellor has maintained she is limited by a 2015 law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly that prevents the movement of “objects of remembrance.”

Tuesday’s bill said the “relocation site shall be on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” But moving the monument indoors will “enable the University to protect the monument from further defacement and damage to ensure that the monument will be preserved for future generations to gain an understanding of the legacy of slavery and the history of the Civil War.”

Under the new bill, the statue would have to be moved by April 1, 2020. The bill allocates $10,000 in nonrecurring funds to the UNC System Board of Governors to help “identify a site and develop plans for the preservation and permanent relocation of the monument.”

The university has been working to add further contextualization to the campus as a whole.

Democratic Governor Roy Cooper has asked the North Carolina Historical Commission to allow for the movement of three Confederate monuments from the old Capitol grounds in Raleigh to a memorial site in Johnston County. The commission was scheduled to meet this spring to make a decision after a study committee looked into the committee’s options on the issue but no date for that meeting has been set.

Democratic senators Valerie Foushee and Mike Woodard, of Orange and Durham counties, and Orange County House representatives Graig Meyer and Verla Insko sponsored the companion bills filed Tuesday.

It is unclear if the bill will be moved by Republican leaders in the General Assembly.