“The food and the table to eat food and some of the chairs are gone, and the banners and the posters – other than these banners that are being held by students – are all gone,” UNC geography professor Altha Cravey said Thursday morning at the university’s McCorkle Place around the Confederate monument Silent Sam.
“All the items that had been gathered here for this protest community are gone, except for what people have on their bodies.”
After a protest was held on the first day of classes last week, protesters had remained at the site. Some individuals eventually posted anti-Confederate signs to the base of Silent Sam and brought out picnic tables and other items for the protesters.
UNC police chief Jeff McCracken said on Thursday morning that those items violated university policy. McCracken said that protesters were given a warning on Wednesday that the items would be removed.
“About the fact that all the property – including the signs and the furniture and those things that have gathered around the Silent Sam statue – were actually a violation of the university’s facilities use policy.”
Cravey was suspicious of the timing of the clean-up efforts.
“It looks like they’ve cleaned up the statue for the football crowd,” Cravey said. “I heard there was a football game this weekend.”
UNC does in fact open its football regular season on Saturday against the University of California – Berkley. And some e-mails have been sent to the Town of Chapel Hill’s public e-mail archive from some residents asking that the protest materials be removed before the football game weekend.
The protest at Silent Sam and focus on other similar monuments has intensified in recent weeks after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter protester was killed. UNC Chancellor Carol Folt has said she would order that the statue be removed, if she felt the university had the unilateral legal authority to do so. But she has also made it clear that she does not believe the university has that power at this time.
Cravey said that decision and the removal of the protesters’ materials sent the wrong message to the campus community.
“To me it shows that they disrespect students and that they stand with white supremacy,” Cravey said.
Cravey did acknowledge that this was not an easy time to be a university administrator across the country “because these so-called free speech issues have been tied to white supremacist violence and provocateurs.”
Earlier in the week, Folt announced the university had denied a request from leader of the so-called alt-right Richard Spencer to speak on campus.
Earl Canty was at the statue on Thursday. He’s not a student, but identified himself as a community member who felt he needed to stand with the students.
“I know a couple of guys have come through harassing the students,” Canty said. “I’m here just to be a present body because I think we will be able to get more done in numbers.
“The students are still coming doing their school work, being responsible for their school, their education. We just want to make a change. That’s why I’m here.”
McCracken said that no individuals were being asked to move and would not be prevented from protesting on the site moving forward – as long as university policy was not violated.
“We’re certainly not telling anybody they can’t be there,” McCracken said. “They’re welcome to be there. They can hold the sign – any of those things. You just can’t attach signs to any structure – whether it be trees, posts, whatever – and you can’t drive stakes in the ground, those kinds of things.
“But if somebody wants to come stand or sit on the ground on a blanket, that’s fine. Just please take the blanket with you when you go. That’s all we ask.”
Students also held a protest of Silent Sam on Thursday, which had previously been planned. After initially saying they would remain at the site until the statue is removed, protesters are now saying they will not be on the site over the Labor Day weekend while they are developing a plan to move forward with continuing protests.
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