On Aug. 30, crews removed a Jefferson Davis statue from the University of Texas at Austin. On Sept. 2, Chancellor Carol Folt announced the University will create a task force to examine UNC history, starting with Carolina Hall and McCorkle Place.
Winston Crisp, vice chancellor for student affairs and one of the co-chairs of the committee, said the committee will follow deadlines set by the Board of Trustees. Folt convened the committee in response to recent Board of Trustees resolutions that called for a new engagement with campus history, Crisp said.
“By Oct. 1, we have to report back on some of the direct activity related to the actual renaming of Saunders Hall, a plaque that they commissioned that needs to go there to commemorate, as well as a plan for thinking about how to relate to the history around McCorkle Place,” Crisp said.
“And then by April 1, we have to report back to the Board of Trustees on the greater plan around the concept of the widespread education and curation of the campus, which includes those ideas of orientation and how we sort of educate people around campus.”
History professor Fitz Brundage said Silent Sam, the statue of a Confederate soldier in McCorkle Place, has been periodically controversial since the late 1960s, when red paint was poured on the statue after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Brundage said he would like to see the monument used to engage students, faculty and visitors on the dynamic issues Silent Sam embodies — whether that be through performances or a walking tour of all the monuments on campus.
“I think it’s important for the University to be able to offer a kind of multilayer approach,” Brundage said. “No one should be able to pass through McCorkle Place who wants to learn something and not be able to learn it.”
Removing the Davis statue was the main point of UT-Austin Student Body President Xavier Rotnofsky’s campaign platform.
