An email sent by a UNC department chairperson on Oct. 13 to University administration about the future of Silent Sam shows striking similarities to the proposal put forth on Dec. 3 by Chancellor Folt and the Board of Trustees, which was rejected Friday by the Board of Governors.
The message from Mark Crescenzi, chairperson of both the Department of Political Science and of the Administrative Board of the Library, was among the 2,000-plus emails sent to the Office of the Chancellor and an inbox created for public comment on the monument. These emails were obtained by The Daily Tar Heel through a public records request.
In an email to The Daily Tar Heel, Mark Crescenzi said that he did not have any discussions with the University's administration related to Silent Sam, and that he does not support UNC's December proposal.
"In the event that the students, staff, faculty, and administration were all overruled by the BOG and the state, my hope was to find a way to place the statue out of sight to at least protect students, staff, and faculty from having to engage with this symbol of white supremacy," he wrote.
"After the report was released, I learned in my conversations with my students that this would not work, in that even if the statue was placed indoors, its continued presence on this campus would be unacceptable, full stop. I completely support that view, and I very much hope that this community finds a way to prevent this statue from returning to campus."
In the message, Crescenzi emphasizes that he is speaking as an individual, and not in his role as chairperson of a department or of the ABL. He indicates a strong preference to house the monument off-campus, “based in part in my desire to support the students, staff, and faculty of color who are most deeply and negatively affected by its continued presence,” he wrote.
“Having said that, I understand that preferences and outcomes often diverge,” he continued. “Should you discover that whomever will be making this decision will require the statue to remain on campus, I recommend the commissioning of a University Museum.”
“Perhaps we could identify a space that is not too prominent but not too out of the way (easier said than done) and ask the good people of North Carolina to help come up with the funds to design and build the museum. I would ask that the statue be relocated into that museum, but that the museum be much more than a place to hold the statue. This is an opportunity to represent the entire history of the university, both the good and the bad.”
Crescenzi also expresses that he thinks the monument should not be housed in Wilson Library. He states that it would cost more than $80 million to “bring the library up to code such that this history would be able to survive the shenanigans of protesters.” Beyond this, Crescenzi writes that Wilson Library wouldn’t be able to contextualize the full history of the University.
