The Board of Trustees met this week, following an extension of the Nov. 15 Silent Sam deadline and the resignation announcement of UNC-System President Margaret Spellings.
On the day the BOT was supposed to recommend a plan of action for the Confederate monument, it instead kept the issue off the docket, focusing instead on affirming a new cycle of student fees and approving other construction plans.
Chancellor Carol Folt — who has incorporated a wide range of input from faculty and students — said that given the size of UNC and the complexity of the different options, she and the BOT will need more time to finalize their proposal.
“We’re told, consider everything,” she said. “From public safety, to the community’s opinion, to the cost — all that.”
Folt said eventually McCorkle Place would feature digital contextualization, possibly in the form of markers for every building that could be read on cell phones.
“We know that we’re going to do a lot in the digital space,” she said. “I think that’s something that we’re already working on in the contextualization.”
Folt said thousands of responses were received after the University asked the community for input. Reading these has been helpful, she said, as many of the responses recognized her position of having to satisfy multiple groups whose interests are at odds.
“There was a lot of soul searching,” she said. “People were trying to enter into the idea of, ‘What would the various options be?”’
The BOT has not specified when it will announce its Silent Sam proposal.
