WRAL: UNC leader says ‘Silent Sam’ won’t return to Chapel Hill campus
On Friday, a judge imposed a 45-day deadline on the Sons of Confederate Veterans to return the Silent Sam statue to the University of North Carolina.
This comes after the Orange County Superior Court Judge Allen Baddour’s ruling that the Sons of Confederate Veterans must return the remaining balance of the $2.5 million bribe that the university’s board of governors set up to preserve the statue.
Baddour recently voided the controversial deal between the SCV and the UNC BOG. Baddour ruled that the SCV has no legal claim to the statue, or standing to bring the lawsuit. Currently, the University of North Carolina system still owns Silent Sam and will again need to figure out what to do with the statue.
Leadership at the state’s university system put “Silent Sam” on the back burner Friday, hoping to focus on other issues while the controversial Confederate monument sits in storage.
Leaders were reticent to discuss the monument’s long-term future, but Interim University of North Carolina President Dr. Bill Roper told reporters that it “will not go back on campus.”
The monument is due back to the UNC system in the next 45 days after a settlement to get it out of Chapel Hill fell apart. UNC Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramsey said during Friday’s regular board meeting that the system “will secure the monument away from campus, and we will deal with it in due course.”
For now, the UNC BOG and UNC System, must weigh in on the state law passed by the Republican controlled legislature, that protects confederate monuments, stating that they must be returned to its original location or a similar place of prominence.
UNC has taken the right steps in stating that the statue, a symbol of resistance to racial progress, will not come back to the campus. But the next obstacle, created by the NC state legislature, will be to determine where the confederate statute will go.
