History task force meets, says full group will exist soon

The leaders of the task force on UNC-Chapel Hill history said Thursday they will decide on the task force's full membership soon after fall break ends.

Chancellor Carol Folt named history professor James Leloudis, Director of the American Indian Center Amy Locklear Hertel and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Winston Crisp as co-chairpersons of the task force on Sept. 2.

Locklear Hertel and Crisp met with project manager Cecilia Moore Thursday to discuss the group's future membership and the goals they're working to set.

Locklear Hertel and Crisp have been planning which students will become task force members, while Leloudis and Moore are working on choosing faculty and staff members.

They didn't name names. Crisp said they'll make a specific list this weekend and in the week after the break.

The students won't be there as advocates "for themselves or one group," Locklear Hertel said.

"We talked about two undergraduates and two graduate students to add on to the task force and about those two students not seeing this as a role of advocacy but as a role, a place where they can represent student voices and have a contribution to the larger tasks at hand," she said.

Crisp agreed, though he said of course task force members will present their first-person views.

"It's not the job of the task force to push one viewpoint over another, it's the job of the task force to be open to bringing in other viewpoints," he said.

Moore said she has reached out to Charles Streeter, chairperson of the Employee Forum, and interim faculty chairperson Peter Mucha to suggest members for the task force from their constituencies.

She specifically told Mucha they don't want another historian on the task force.

Moore said she expects to hear back from both men after fall break.

Assistant Vice Chancellor of Communications and Public Affairs Rick White joined the group by phone to talk about how the task force will seek community input.

Task force members will take a "listening tour" to meet with various groups on campus — the list is still being decided and will include 15 to 20 groups — and White has plans for a website that will be another venue for input.

The website would also provide updates on the task force's work and answer frequently asked questions.

Folt's Sept. 2 letter announcing the task force set deadlines in November and May.

"The first projects will focus on historical interpretations of Carolina Hall and of McCorkle Place, which will be reported on at the November Board of Trustees meeting," the letter said.

Crisp said he thinks there has been confusion about the November date.

"I had not been under the impression that we were expecting that we were going to have substantive decisions made about physical changes by November the first," he said. "It was more along the lines of 'what is the plan?'"

The trustees asked for an outline of a concept for Carolina Hall and McCorkle Place, Moore said, and a timeline and a budget for those proposals.

"We're, at this point, (we) don't expect to have any content developed for those things beyond broad concepts," she said.

Crisp said in November, he does want to be able to tell the trustees what subcommittees the task force will have and who will sit on them, along with specific plans and timelines.

"Other than the very specific, obvious — we have to do this marker that they prescribed the language to and put that up on Carolina Hall — I don't think we can make those decisions and make those kinds of changes without the appropriate input of the community."

Moore has been working on that marker — a plaque the trustees planned for Carolina Hall.

"We fixed a grammatical thing," she said.

But the mock-up plaque, which was due a couple of weeks ago, hasn't arrived yet, she said.

She and the facilities department are working on it, she said.

"That's the one thing they expect us to have done," Crisp said.

university@dailytarheel.com