The chorus of voices calling for the removal of the Confederate monument Silent Sam from the UNC campus is continuing to grow with faculty from the Department of Communication.

A statement was posted on the department’s website on Thursday.

“We understand ‘Silent Sam’ to be a symbol of the history and legacies of racial slavery, anti-black racism, and white supremacy that persist in the state of North Carolina, the university, and our country,” the statement reads.

The faculty argue that the “presence of a confederate monument on our campus is contrary to the values, expectations, and practices that we have worked hard to implement to dismantle the vestiges of that history.”

The university administration, therefore, has a “moral obligation to remove this symbol of violent oppression from our midst, and continue the work of dismantling systemic racism.”

A statement calling for the removal of Silent Sam was also issued by the geography department this week.

A statement was also recently signed by 34 law school professors at UNC supporting the removal of the monument to Confederate soldiers.

The university has been threatened with a federal lawsuit if administrators do not order the monument be moved. Campus leadership has maintained that they do not have the authority to remove the statue due to a 2015 law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly that prevents the moving of “objects of remembrance.”

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