Protesters scuffle with the police during a rally on the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.
When administrators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a plan on Monday about what to do with its toppled Confederate monument, Silent Sam, the proposal was widely panned for its cost: $5.3 million to build a center to house it, and $800,000 a year in operating expenses.
But now another detail in the plan has come under fire, this one also costly. A safety panel recommended that the university create a 40-person “mobile force platoon” to respond to protests on the Chapel Hill campus and across the sprawling 17-campus system. The price tag: $2 million annually, with $500,000 in equipment costs.
We're sorry. Something went wrong.
We are unable to fully display the content of this page.
The most likely cause of this is a content blocker on your computer or network.
Please allow access to our site, and then refresh this page.
You may then be asked to log in, create an account if you don't already have one,
or subscribe.
If you continue to experience issues, please contact us at 202-466-1032 or help@chronicle.com
Chuck Liddy, The News & Observer via AP
Protesters scuffle with the police during a rally on the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.
When administrators at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a plan on Monday about what to do with its toppled Confederate monument, Silent Sam, the proposal was widely panned for its cost: $5.3 million to build a center to house it, and $800,000 a year in operating expenses.
But now another detail in the plan has come under fire, this one also costly. A safety panel recommended that the university create a 40-person “mobile force platoon” to respond to protests on the Chapel Hill campus and across the sprawling 17-campus system. The price tag: $2 million annually, with $500,000 in equipment costs.
Chapel Hill is facing a dilemma that has tripped up many college and university campuses, especially since the events last year in Charlottesville, Va., where a white-supremacist rally overran the University of Virginia campus and, a day later, turned deadly. How should colleges react to protests that have the potential to become violent while respecting the free-speech rights of students and others?
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.
The stakes were also made clear at the University of California at Berkeley, where protesters of a controversial speaker last winter smashed windows and started fires. The university spent a combined $4 million on security for that and other such events in 2017, according to Berkeley.
ADVERTISEMENT
To deal with safety concerns arising from the Silent Sam question, which has been a source of increasing acrimony on the campus for years, the university hired Chris Swecker, a former assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to provide advice. Swecker put together a panel of security consultants.
The consultants recommended the mobile police force to the system’s Board of Governors, which is scheduled to meet next week. The panel’s report states that the nature of campus protests has changed in recent years, with groups more willing to use violence to further their goals.
“This new dynamic has presented a complex public-safety and security challenge for college-campus police departments across the country, including the UNC PD,” the report says. “Campus departments must effectively preserve public safety and maintain order on the college campuses, where few limitations on public gatherings exist and crowd-control tactics generally employed by law enforcement are fraught with sensitivities over any use of force by police.”
The report also notes that university police departments, including Chapel Hill’s, don’t have the training and resources to effectively handle crowds and prevent violence in large-scale protests. In just the clashes since the statue’s fall last August, the report states, extremists on both sides have instigated violence between the protest groups and have baited law-enforcement officials into overreacting.
ADVERTISEMENT
Some activists who have been protesting Silent Sam, both before and since the statue was pulled down, felt as if the plan had been intended to crack down on them. The relationship between law-enforcement authorities and activists has already been fraught, with protesters frequently chanting, “The cops and Klan go hand in hand.” Last year activists unmasked a university police officer who was working undercover to infiltrate their movement.
The university is openly declaring itself as a totalitarian state.
“The university is openly declaring itself as a totalitarian state,” said Lindsay Ayling, a Ph.D. student in history, on Wednesday. She said some graduate students were threatening a grade strike until the recommendations for Silent Sam and for the mobile police force are off the table. Ayling is not the only critic of what some have described as the increasing militarization of campus police forces.
The university also relied on the safety panel in devising its proposal for the monument. The plan calls for building a new history and education center, with high-end security, that would house Silent Sam. The new building would include limited windows and glass, reinforced security doors, fire-proof construction materials, video surveillance, and other “state of the art” security measures.
Vimal Patel, a reporter at The New York Times, previously covered student life, social mobility, and other topics for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
