Opinion: A few suggestions on how to protest Silent Sam

Silent Sam has wreaked havoc over this campus since 1913. Dedicated to the 321 UNC alumni who fought and died during the Civil War and all students who fought for the Confederacy, Silent Sam honors the institution of slavery and its proliferation.

In light of recent activism happening with Silent Sam, the Department of Public Safety released a game-changing statement. After a Confederate bandana adorned on Silent Sam was removed, DPS spokesman Randy Young admitted the transgression on Silent Sam would not be pursued because it is not a criminal offense. So this got us wondering, what exactly can we do to Silent Sam?

The willful and wanton injury to property is a Class 1 misdemeanor carrying a potential sentence of up to one year. This includes acts such as defacing a monument with paint, scribble or writing of any sort.

Below are four legal ways to protest Silent Sam in order from least to most involved:

1. Outfit Silent Sam with black power T-shirts and hang the flag of the Black Panther Party from his rifle.

Silent Sam is a stand-in for white supremacy, a constant reminder to the tyranny and violence which has kept black students away from this campus. At its unveiling, Silent Sam was contextualized with a story of abuse inflicted upon a black woman’s body.

While the Black Panther Party was not exempt from decentering black women and sexist organizing, outfitting Silent Sam with symbols of black power at least alludes to a counter-narrative of black existence and involuntary servitude that created this town, school and community.

2. Cover Silent Sam with notes, each detailing the lived experiences of black women, their influence on students at UNC and their interactions with Silent Sam. 

Essays could be written, describing the sexual and physical trauma inherent to slavery and how the voices of women were silenced in order to proliferate such an egregious institution.

If the University continues to take its time on the curation of Silent Sam, then it should at least provide the site with notes for students to voice their concerns, if spray paint and other means of nonviolent protest are not allowed.

3. Take an awkward selfie with Silent Sam, either using your own Snapchat device or by standing in the line of sight of security cameras because UNC is more concerned with protecting Silent Sam than they are with keeping students safe. 

Take your selfie and caption it with a Big Sean or Drake lyric too vulgar to include here.

4. Screen “The Birth of a Nation,” the 1915 silent film about the birth of the Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction era, on Silent Sam. 

The two fall heavily in line from an ideological perspective. Both were created around the same time in a Confederate-sympathizing culture. Many students have not seen the film and don’t realize the extent of what Silent Sam actually represents, the historical context of why he was erected and why he still stands today in 2015. A film like “The Birth of a Nation,” while a dramatization, exemplifies what being in the South was like then.

At this point, we should all know what Silent Sam is and what it represents. It stands facing the North as the South’s last line of defense against the Union. We should protest its existence at UNC until the truth about its history is realized.