9:40 a.m. update: UNC Chancellor Carol Folt presented a four point plan for the preservation of the Silent Sam statue at Monday’s meeting. She stated that the university would prefer to move the statue off-campus, but the current law does not allow for it. Public safety concerns also made it impossible to return the statue to its former pedestal at McCorkle Place or any other outdoor location.
Folt said that, in accordance to the plan, Silent Sam would be moved to a new on-campus facility at the Odum Village site. Folt estimated the cost at $5.3 million to build new long-term structure, which would include technology and a teaching classroom aimed at telling the “full history” of UNC.
Folt says UNC recommending four-point plan considering disposition and preservation, continuing and expanding contextualization efforts, establishing a history and education center and create McCorkle Place Gateway
— WCHL & Chapelboro (@WCHLChapelboro) December 3, 2018
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8:15 a.m. update: The UNC Board of Trustees opened Monday morning’s meeting with remarks from chair Haywood Cochrane and Chancellor Carol Folt. The agenda for the meeting said the board will receive a legal update, a public safety update and discuss potential action plans to protect public safety while they were in closed session.
The board moved into closed session just before 8:10 a.m. Monday.
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Monday is the deadline for the UNC – Chapel Hill Board of Trustees and Chancellor Carol Folt to present a plan for the disposition and preservation of the Confederate monument on the campus known as Silent Sam.
The deadline, which was extended from November 15, comes more than three months after protesters pulled the statue down from its pedestal on McCorkle Place. The campus Board of Trustees have called a special meeting for Monday morning and, although no specific items are listed on the agenda, Silent Sam is expected to be the topic of the day.
UNC System President Margaret Spellings said recently she was confident the campus was developing a thorough plan.
“They’ve done a lot of good homework in terms of assessing the security issues, getting input and thoughts from lots of constituencies,” she said.
Spellings, like members of the campus administration and many members of the UNC System Board of Governors have remained quiet as to their personal thoughts on the future of the monument. When asked in an interview last week, Spellings said it was important to allow the campus to work through its process and voice her opinion at the appropriate time.
“It would’ve been wrong for me to opine on what I thought should happen to Silent Sam while we have given Carolina the option to go, please, have a process,” Spellings said, “consider these issues, consider security, consider the options.
“For me to preempt that would’ve been presumptuous.”
The statue has been a point of protest for decades on the campus. Chancellor Folt said repeatedly after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counterprotester was killed, that she would order the statue be moved in the interest of public safety. She has maintained she is limited from doing that by a 2015 law that limits the movement of objects of remembrance.
The UNC System Board of Governors is scheduled to discuss the recommendation for the future of the monument from the campus at its December 14 meeting.
This post will be updated with additional information as it is made available.
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