UNC-Chapel Hill once again made national news two weeks ago when Chancellor Folt and the Board of Trustees announced their recommendation for the relocation of Silent Sam following its toppling by protestors in September.
This decision came after months of relative silence surrounding the issue of Sam, apart from the injustice of activist Maya Little's sentencing. Personally, it also came just on the heels of the revelation that there were no available rooms on campus for my friends and me next year, an issue that has still not been rectified and which left me disheartened about the state of this university's administration.
Still, I have to admit that upon first opening the email from the Chancellor's Office, I believed the relocation plan to be a good thing. Packaged in language about the "appreciation of diversity" and the "importance of recognizing campus history," the idea of a university history and education center here on campus that would house the statue along with other artifacts seemed to be a decent compromise. The place they suggested to build the center, Odum Village, is also mostly out of the way, unlike McCorkle Place, so it wouldn't exactly be a public spectacle if this was truly their only option.
At least, this was my impression until further reporting came out from The Daily Tar Heel that stated that the new center would cost $5.3 million to build and $800,000 per year for maintenance (up from a still-high $390 thousand for security now), and that the Board of Trustees and Tuition and Fee Advisory Taskforce had advised raising student fees by $65.39 to cover these expenses. I was dumbfounded, as I had initially assumed that any small costs would be covered by the alums that this decision was presumptively looking out for.
Instead, they would be relying on the money of students who mostly opposed the plan, casting into doubt their true commitment to their diverse student body. Not only that, but their statement isn't entirely true—the Confederate monument doesn't have to remain on campus, as state law technically says that it could be removed if it threatens public safety, which one could argue is constituted by the occasional presence of Klansmen on North Campus.
This bungling of the issue comes at the end of a very chaotic first semester for me, with two hurricanes and a water crisis to boot, so I hope that this at least can be resolved in a better way than it is currently. Recently, the Residence Hall Association and Student Government sent out letters expressing their discontent with the situation and support for student protestors, and the ongoing TA strike seems like it will apply a lot of pressure to the administration as final grades don't come in, so there's hope yet.
