Anti-Silent Sam protesters, some of whom were UNC students, chanted, trying to drown out any coverage of the supporters of the Confederate monument who arrived on campus Saturday morning.
The rally came after the Confederate monument was pulled down from its pedestal on McCorkle Place on the Chapel Hill campus last Monday night.
Security was stepped on Saturday with barricades erected around the remaining pedestal and a heavy police presence, with officers unloading riot gear early in the day. One layer of those barricades remained in place Monday morning.
Those opposed to the Confederate monument focused their attention on those on campus wearing clothing showing support for the Confederacy or carrying large Confederate flags on their shoulders.
There were tense moments and small scuffles that broke out during the roughly five-hour rally. Silent Sam opponents formed a wall around the first pro-Confederate protesters who arrived Saturday morning. As additional individuals came onto campus with Confederate flags and flowers to lay at the base of where Silent Sam stood, pushing and shoving would occur. Videos on social media showed one Confederate supporter punching one of the other protesters, who had attempted to grab the flowers he was carrying from his hand.
There were seven arrests on Saturday, bringing the total to 11 arrests since the rally last Monday night.
A UNC grad student named Bo engaged with one of the Confederate supporters early on Saturday morning. It was a civil conversation, which there were some of early on in the rally.
“Part of it is probably just my, I don’t know, bad impulses,” the student said when asked why he felt it was important to have those conversations. “I like to be confrontational.”
Bo, who is from Ohio, said that hearing the stories of how the statue has impacted the lives of students on the UNC campus has had a big influence on him.
“I’m invested in the symbols of this campus and what they mean and how they affect people,” he said. “And after so long, listening to students and my colleagues and people in the community telling me what the statue does to them when they walk by it, and how they feel degraded by a monument that for no good reason still stands here after so many years” has led to him being more involved.
UNC Chancellor Carol Folt said in a conference call with reporters after Saturday’s rally that keeping a safe environment on campus at all times is a challenge but is a top priority.
“I think a lot of that is trying to manage the crowd but also allow people to have the protests that are lawfully guaranteed,” Folt said. “They have a right to come on campus; they have a right to congregate in these spaces.
“And we do everything possible to keep them safe.”
There were no serious injuries reported on Saturday.
There have been calls for Silent Sam to be re-installed, including public pushes from a member of the UNC System Board of Governors Thom Goolsby. Goolsby claims state law mandates the statue be placed back on campus within 90 days.
Folt said the university would not be rushed into a decision on the monument’s future.
“We also need to work to identify a sustainable, safe and secure solution,” Folt said. “But I won’t be rushed into that until we’ve had a chance to really work with people and think about that. And I have to also make it my business to allow people to have as many opinions as they’d like, in a safe and peaceful way.”
The chancellor reiterated on Saturday that she would prefer the monument be moved.
“I’ve said from the start that I think, in the interest of public safety, I would find a better location – a safe, secure location – for the monument that would allow us to talk about it, learn from it and deal with it in a respectful and appropriate way,” Folt said. “And if I could do that, that is what I still believe is necessary.”
Folt has maintained that she is prevented from acting unilaterally to move the statue by a 2015 law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly which greatly limits the movement of “objects of remembrance.”
The investigation into Monday night’s events is ongoing and additional arrest could occur.
Both the UNC – Chapel Hill Board of Trustees and UNC System Board of Governors have called special meetings for Tuesday.
Additional rallies are expected on the Chapel Hill campus as well.
