UNC board can’t hide from the Silent Sam deal. It needs to correct it.
It’s understandable that Silent Sam, the Confederate statue toppled on UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus last year, is under wraps somewhere as the debate continues about its final disposition. What’s not understandable is that the group that is supposed to resolve the issue, the University of North Carolina Board of Governors, has also taken cover.
The 26-member board will meet on Friday by conference call rather than show up at Chapel Hill for a meeting. Officially, many members can’t come because of conflicts with December commencement ceremonies. Unofficially, it looks like the board is so besieged by complaints about its giving Silent Sam to the Sons of Confederate Veterans that its members would rather not deal with protesters.
The Board of Governors is faced with choices in the Silent Sam matter. Hiding is not one of them. If the members don’t want to deal with protesters, they have no business governing the university system. At a public university, authority requires accountability. Board members shouldn’t take refuge from public disputes by retreating behind speaker phones and in closed meetings.
But what the board is doing and should be doing are now quite separate.
In a bizarre deal announced the day before Thanksgiving — when students and faculty were mostly gone from the Chapel Hill campus — the board agreed to give Silent Sam to the Confederate group. The agreement, an instant settlement of a lawsuit filed by the group, also provides $2.5 million in university funds to transport and house the monument, which was erected in 1913 to honor UNC students who fought for the Confederacy.
The committee of five board members who quietly arranged the deal thought they were accommodating both sides: The statue would not be coming back to the Chapel Hill campus and supporters of the statue could put it up elsewhere. But the settlement is provoking as much anger as the statue itself. Some UNC-CH faculty and students say the university is underwriting a group that honors soldiers who defended slavery. One outside group plans to legally challenge the settlement.
Meanwhile, the backlash is undermining UNC-CH’s leadership. Interim Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, who wants the job permanently, diminished his standing on campus and increased his appeal to the board by failing to oppose the agreement. The board may name him to the chancellor’s post on Friday. He may get the job after losing the campus.
In fairness, the entire board did not vote on the settlement. It was approved by a board committee. But now all board members should vote to reconsider it.
The Silent Sam settlement is a legal boondoggle — a “settlement” obviously drafted in advance of a lawsuit that the Confederate group admits would have been tossed on the first motion to dismiss. The $2.5 million would come from interest on donations to the university rather than taxpayer funds, but it’s still money diverted from university use to preserve and present Silent Sam in a new setting and underwrite the Confederate group’s activities.
The Board of Governors stresses that the settlement was approved by Attorney General Josh Stein, but his office wasn’t asked to assess its merits. His spokeswoman said, “Attorney General Stein personally believes it is an excessive amount of money that should instead be used to strengthen the university and support students.”
The settlement has revived rather than resolved the controversy over what to do with Silent Sam. Dissenting members of the Board of Governors should speak up, and state officials should explore all options for nullifying the settlement.