After Silent Sam, Folt should lead
Silent Sam is down. Now, will Carol Folt stand up?
The chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill failed to lead on the deeply contentious issue of whether a Confederate war monument — featuring a young soldier, rifle in hand — should stand prominently at a main entryway to campus. Gov. Roy Cooper said Folt had the authority to remove the statue dubbed “Silent Sam,” but she wavered.
Folt said she personally thought the statue should be moved, but she deferred to some members of the university’s board of trustees and the UNC Board of Governors who claimed the statue should stay as a monument to UNC alumni who died fighting for the Confederacy. But they weren’t so much for the statue as they were against the idea of giving in to what they regard as a wave of intolerant political correctness that opposes not only Confederate monuments, but the white, male, conservative leadership that rules the state and nation today.
Folt could have taken all that on. She could have acted swiftly to remove the monument and then confronted the backlash from some alumni, trustees, members of the board of governors and leaders in the legislature. But instead of being a leader, she chose to be a moderator, convening meetings with students and telling the UNC-CH Board of Trustees, “If it was my choice, I would relocate Silent Sam based on concerns for public safety, but I don’t have that authority under the law.”
By taking cover behind a lack of legal authority — a dubious claim given the governor’s approval of Silent Sam’s removal and Civil Rights law — Folt surrendered her moral authority. As chancellor, she could have looked past legal hairsplitting about whether an obscure state historical commission must decide the matter and acted in the name of justice and respect for students offended by what the statue represents.
She didn’t. But she did approve spending $390,000 to protect Silent Sam from damage while she dithered for a year, awaiting some mythical solution that would leave no one offended. Her legalistic, delaying approach echoed her response to the university’s academic-athletic scandal. In that case, UNC dodged the NCAA and kept its basketball championship banners, but lost its reputation as a champion of athletic accountability.
Now the problem of Silent Sam has also gone away without Folt having to take a clear stand that would upset powerful people at UNC. And, remarkably, no one was hurt, save for old Sam, face down in the mud.
But this matter is hardly over. There’s the immediate issue of what to do with those who attacked the monument and toppled the soldier. The Monday night assault as captured on video is a dispiriting thing to watch. Whatever moral high ground the attackers claim, it’s impossible to not also see elements of vigilantism and vandalism in the night crowd pulling down the monument.
Ultimately, though, the crowd and others opposed to Silent Sam’s prominent post are not to blame. They’ve waited on the leaders of the university to act since at least the demonstration in Charlottesville. Black people, in particular, have been waiting since the statue was erected in 1913 amid the segregation and oppression of black Americans and rising nostalgia for the Lost Cause.
Folt can lead in the aftermath even if she didn’t lead in the build up. She can stand up for the protesters and apologize for the inaction that exhausted their patience. She could also lead a university-wide inquiry into what the uprising over Silent Sam says about race relations and the distribution of political power in North Carolina. That discussion would include the final fate of Silent Sam and North Carolina’s other Confederate monuments.
Barnett: nbarnett@newsobserver.com, 919-829-4512
This story was originally published August 21, 2018 at 5:36 PM.