‘We’re Looking for Leadership’: Outcry on Silent Sam Builds on Eve of Critical Board Vote

As the debate over Silent Sam grew, Jennifer Ho thought, What power do I have as a professor?

In the months since the toppling of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Confederate monument, the debate had only swelled. Administrators seemed to want Sam off campus, but released a plan to spend millions of dollars to keep it on. The community recoiled, and a grade strike by teaching assistants heightened the stakes.

Then Ho remembered: She served on a diversity advisory board for Kevin M. Guskiewicz, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, who had threatened “serious consequences” to teaching assistants involved in the strike.

Ho emailed her colleagues in the advisory group, drafted a letter, and asked if they would sign. On Tuesday morning they sent it and posted it online.

This is the letter that members of @unccollege Dean’s Faculty Diversity Advisory Group sent to Dean Kevin Guskiewicz @unccollegedean -- I know Dean Guskiewicz to be someone who truly and deeply cares about equity and inclusion--and I know he cares about faculty #HarkTheSound pic.twitter.com/8DlQdfKLVz

— Jennifer Ho (@DrJenHo) December 12, 2018

Ho, a professor of English and comparative literature, is one of hundreds of people at Chapel Hill, and academics across the country, to submit open letters and pledges opposing the plan to house the Silent Sam statue in a $5.3-million history center that would also cost $800,000 a year to operate. Many have also urged the UNC administration not to punish graduate students for withholding undergraduates’ final grades in protest of the plan.

Now activists are promising more protests in advance of a critical systemwide Board of Governors meeting, on Friday, to consider the plan. And one board member has threatened more punishment for the striking TAs.

Chapel Hill’s chancellor, Carol L. Folt, and its Board of Trustees unveiled the proposed history and education center early this month. The outcry was broad and swift. It has come from almost 1,000 faculty members and instructors at Chapel Hill and across the country, who signed a letter asking the university and the Board of Governors not to punish graduate-student protesters. Almost 200 current and former athletes and more than 150 undergraduates have added their support.

Alumni and others have threatened to withhold donations. And more than 200 faculty members and instructors have pledged not to teach in the first week of the spring term if the board keeps Silent Sam on the campus.

‘Extortion’ and ‘Terrorism’

Some members of the Board of Governors, meanwhile, have both lambasted the striking graduate students and criticized Chapel Hill’s plan.

W. Marty Kotis III, a board member, told The Chronicle on Tuesday that he would propose a policy at Friday’s meeting that any graduate-student instructor who participates in a grade strike will be fired. He hopes eventually to pass a policy that goes further, expelling any graduate students who participate and barring them from ever enrolling in another UNC-system institution.

“This and violence are in the same sort of category,” Kotis said, referring to instructors’ withholding grades. “They are choosing to take an action that has a negative impact on their students.”

The Rise and Fall of Silent Sam

Silent Sam, a statue of a Confederate soldier, dominated the main entrance of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for more than a century, despite decades of protests. But suddenly, in August 2018, the statue was yanked down by protesters. And in January 2019 the campus’s chancellor, Carol L. Folt, removed the statue’s pedestal and other remnants. Here’s how Silent Sam moved from dominance to disappearance.

• UNC’s Silent Sam Settlement Sparked a Backlash. Now a Judge Has Overturned the Deal.
• UNC’s Silent Sam Settlement Was Reached Quickly. The Blowback Might Last Longer.
• UNC Will Give Silent Sam to a Confederate Group — Along With a $2.5-Million Trust

Kotis previously called for the teaching assistants’ termination, saying the grade strike was tantamount to “extortion” and “terrorism.” He has also questioned the cost of the history center and suggested the plan may violate a controversial monuments law passed in 2015 by the state legislature. The law, which Folt cited as the reason administrators could not move the statue off campus, states that publicly owned monuments can be moved only with the approval of the North Carolina Historical Commission.

Still unclear amid the outcry is the fate of some students’ final grades and of the instructors withholding them.

Chapel Hill can’t comment on personnel decisions, “particularly for TAs who would also be protected by Ferpa,” wrote a spokeswoman, Joanne Peters Denny, in an email, referring to federal privacy laws covering students. “But I would note that we still haven’t received any specific reports of withheld grades or observed any unusual patterns.”

Grades began to be due this week, and on a collective Twitter account, activists last week said 79 teaching assistants had pledged to withhold more than 2,000 grades, though the university said at the time that there was no way to verify those numbers.

Ho, the English professor, said the 72-hour window required for final-grade submission is so narrow that faculty members frequently fail to hit the deadline anyway. She doesn’t know how the university will determine who is late and who is purposefully withholding grades, she said. She has deliberately not asked graduate students she knows whether they are participating in the strike, and has chosen not to participate herself, because of the possible consequences for the graduate students she teaches, she said.

‘Moving Mountains’

Community members are also split over the legality of Chapel Hill’s plan for the monument.

Stephen T. Leonard, an emeritus faculty member in political science and former chair of the system’s Faculty Assembly, argued in a letter to members of the Board of Governors that they faced “a fundamental conflict of laws.” If they preserve Silent Sam on the campus to comport with the monuments law, he said, they may face a federal civil-rights lawsuit.

Over all, the atmosphere at Chapel Hill is “discouraging,” Ho said. Many are worried about the status of students who expect to graduate at this Sunday’s winter commencement. And many are also concerned about a pro-Confederate rally planned at Silent Sam’s vacant pedestal that same day.

“I don’t think it would take much to have good will asserted and for people to feel united,” Ho said. “We’re looking for leadership. To say, ‘Here’s what’s right, and here’s what’s wrong.’”

“It wouldn’t take moving mountains,” Ho added, “to get people to want to feel proud again.”

Sarah Brown contributed reporting to this article.

Follow Steven Johnson on Twitter at @stetyjohn, or email him at steve.johnson@chronicle.com.