One protester let out a single “boo” that lingered in the room at Wednesday’s meeting of the UNC Board of Trustees finance, infrastructure and audit committee meeting.
Protesters at UNC Board of Trustees committee meeting. Photo via Blake Hodge.
That boo came as UNC trustee Dwight Stone was introducing associate vice chancellor of campus safety and risk management Derek Kemp. Kemp was scheduled to give a report on overall campus safety, and most of Wednesday’s presentation focused on Silent Sam – the Confederate monument on the Chapel Hill campus that has been a lightning rod of protests over the decades.
Kemp said Wednesday’s protest, during the middle of the typically quiet summer on the campus, was indicative of a “very active” semester once again this fall with protest.
Wednesday’s protest came after UNC announced that campus police estimated spending $390,000 on an increased presence around Silent Sam over the last fiscal year ending in June 2018.
“That includes an officer that is assigned to the area 24-7,” Kemp said. “Our number one priority is safety of all students, staff, faculty and visitors.”
The protesters would pepper in their comments on Wednesday as Kemp was finishing sentences throughout the presentation. Those tactics drew a request from Stone, the committee chair, to remain respectful.
Jen Standish is a graduate student in the history department at UNC and was one of the protesters at Wednesday’s meeting. She said that the group wanted to make sure the trustees understood the perspective of students.
Standish said the $390,000 spent toward policing Silent Sam could have benefitted the university in other ways, including retention of faculty of color, subsidizing parking rates for campus workers making below a certain benchmark and other areas.
Vice chancellor of university communications Joel Curran said the money was already allocated to the police department’s operating budget and wasn’t diverted from other campus areas.
“Per the chancellor’s directive to ensure that the safety and security are maintained in and around McCorkle [Place] and, of course, all of campus,” Curran said, “they determined that the best use of those funds would be directed in that area.”
Standish said she felt the group accomplished their goal Wednesday.
“I think we were heard,” Standish said. “I don’t think we were listened to; I think they definitely heard us, which is important and hopefully can get to people outside of this meeting.”
Standish and Kemp did agree on one thing, the protests would be continuing throughout next semester.
“I don’t think there’s any slowing down of student and campus worker and community dedication to getting this statue taken down,” Standish said.
UNC Chancellor Carol Folt has said repeatedly that she would order the statue be removed, if she felt she had the authority to do so. But Folt maintains that she is limited by a 2015 law passed by the Republican-led General Assembly barring the movement of “objects of remembrance.”
