Coming off of a public comment session on the Confederate monument at UNC known as Silent Sam, the university Board of Trustees addressed the statue’s future at the board meeting Thursday.

Board chair Haywood Cochrane said the session reiterated some of the board’s values.

“We also heard much passion, much emotion, together with many very personal experiences,” Cochrane said during his opening remarks, “which reinforce our opposition to white supremacy and racism in all forms.”

Chancellor Carol Folt added during her remarks that there is a section of the campus community that views the statue as a racist symbol.

“Many expressed deep pain and fear of what the Confederate monument represents to them,” Folt said. “Based on everything we know, there is no question that the monument was erected during a period when white supremacy, bigotry and racism were a strong message.

“And that was conveyed publicly by those who supported the symbolism of the artifact and spoke at its dedication.”

Folt said that the placement of Silent Sam at such a prominent location on campus is also seen by some as a glorification of the statue.

“They’ve been saying for years that they love the university,” Folt said of some protesters. “But that they feel the presence of Silent Sam – especially in such a prominent, front-door location – is a betrayal of values of inclusivity and welcome that we espouse for our community.

“We must accept this reality if we are truly to confront the issue.”

Cochrane said that this issue is different than the scenario from 2015 where the board voted to rename Saunders Hall to Carolina Hall. The building was previously named for Williams L. Saunders, who was purportedly a leader of the KKK in North Carolina after serving in the Confederacy.

“This current situation is different because of delegated authority issues and current state laws,” Cochrane said. “These are the facts; we live with them.

“But we will not stop considering all legal options available.”

Folt said that the process of renaming Saunders Hall took months of research and work with other stakeholders.

“If we follow the process that we did for Carolina Hall,” Folt said, “the team itself comes up with a whole series of ways to do it. Then they start going out and working with different people in the community – reading it, looking at it, is it getting the message across.”

While the process is ongoing with the chancellor’s History Task Force, Folt said the campus community will see progress soon at McCorkle Place around Silent Sam.

“They’ll start seeing the real products of all that research come forward,” Folt said. “And I think that, by itself, is important. And then as we think about the feedback we get, we have to decide based on that how we’re going to communicate with people about it and what ideas we have that we think we can follow now and what might happen as other things change in the coming months.”

Cochrane reiterated that the university is “not going to break a law,” referencing the 2015 legislation passed by the Republican-led General Assembly preventing the movement of objects of remembrance.

“We hope people understand that, in the urgency of it, that breaking the law is not the answer,” Cochrane said.

There have been calls for the administration to follow direction from Governor Roy Cooper and others to order the statue be removed by deeming it a public safety threat. But Folt said the law isn’t clear in many aspects, including on the authority to issue that directive.

“It’s hard for a public to accept that you can’t do something,” Folt said. “But true confusion in laws just ends up in courts, if you don’t try to clarify the law.”

Folt did say in her remarks during last week’s meeting she would order the statue be moved to a different location on campus if she felt she had the authority to do so.

Cochrane and Folt said that a petition to the State Historical Commission to remove Silent Sam would have to come from the UNC System Board of Governors.

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