UNC chancellor announces resignation after approving removal of ‘Silent Sam’ Confederate monument
The actual statue was toppled last year, and the base has now been taken to an undisclosed 'secure location'
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Your support makes all the difference.The chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has resigned while at the same time approving the removal of a contentious Confederate monument that many view as celebrating America’s ugly history of slavery.
Chancellor Carol Folt announced in a letter that she had authorized the removal of the remains of the “Silent Sam” monument on the school’s upper quad, and that she would step down from her post after the school year.
The remains of the monument — which included just the base after the main portion of the statue was toppled by protesters in August — were removed overnight on Monday.
They have been taken to an undisclosed “secure location”, according to the university.
“The presence of the remaining parts of the monument on campus poses a continuing threat both to the personal safety and well-being of our community and to our ability to provide a stable, productive educational environment”, Ms Folt’s said in her letter on Monday.
The letter continued: ”No one learns at their best when they feel unsafe”.
Ms Folt has been the university’s chancellor since 2013, and said in her letter that the controversy over the monument had caused too much disruption.
“Carolina’s leadership needs to return its full attention to helping our university achieve its vision and to live its values,” Ms Folt wrote.
The removal of the statue is a part of a larger debate in the United States over the presence of Confederate monuments on public lands, a subject that has been intensely discussed in recent years after the Charleston, South Carolina church shooting in 2015, and the white nationalist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.
After the “Silent Sam” statue was torn down in August, the school’s board of trustees proposed a $5.3m building to store the monument safely, but the plan was ultimately rejected last month.
The statue was built on the school grounds at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The name of the statue is a general nickname for Confederate soldiers.
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