To deem graduate students’ brave and moral action – exceptional characteristics when it comes to UNC authority figures standing against white supremacy – as harmful and hostage-holding is distorted, factually unfounded and shameful. Despite the near-unanimous consensus that Silent Sam should be permanently removed from UNC, the TAs who partook in the action to withhold grades were the sole group standing up for Black and Brown students’ and faculty members’ safety by quite literally putting their money where their mouth is (the epitome of personal sacrifice).
The obtuse DTH editorial characterizing the TAs’ actions as selfish and exploitative disregards the conspicuous risks of engaging in such an action, especially for an already vulnerable, underpaid and unrecognized workforce at UNC.
Admittedly, I was at first concerned about the action because of the potential retaliation TAs would face. They put their futures on the line by intending to withhold grades until assured UNC’s Board of Trustees offensive proposal to return Silent Sam to campus would be rescinded. (The proposal, released the Monday before finals started, etched in our minds a $5.3 million price tag to exhibit how much UNC is willing to pay to uphold its white supremacist legacy and a militarized police force to target its own students.)
Then, I attended a meeting with Dean Kevin Guskiewicz and former Vice Chancellor and General Counsel Mark Merritt held to intimidate TAs from participating in the action. There, I witnessed the TAs’ collective and contagious power. While the administrators attempted to gloss over the pain and upheaval in which the campus was reeling from the proposal, the TAs stood strong on our behalf, thoughtfully imploring them to take the moral high ground and righteously protect undergraduates’ rights to safety, wellbeing and healthy learning environments. TAs in fact defended us from the harm Silent Sam poses on Black and Brown students and challenged the hostage-holding of UNC-sanctioned police forces violently attacking student protestors.
Beyond the sheer mischaracterization of the TAs’ intentions and action, the editorial appallingly equates the ‘harm’ students experience by not receiving grades on time – though we did all receive them by Dec. 17, the final day to turn in grades – with the dangerous harm inflicted on Black and Brown students by having a white supremacist monument that gathers those with such beliefs, where they verbally and physically abuse students and are condoned by UNC police and officials.
As a senior, I, like many others, am applying to jobs and schools but would much rather prioritize the necessity of creating a safe campus than maneuvering my personal circumstances with ‘incompletes’ on my transcript. I would readily explain graduate students protested to create a safe campus for all and pressured our University officials to do so, as well.
Stop scapegoating graduate students when UNC’s administration is profoundly harming and victimizing undergraduates by prioritizing white supremacy, a statue, police violence and apparently, our semester grades. As I begin my final semester as an undergraduate at Carolina, I realize for the first time I am able to find collective, moral leadership in my superiors at UNC. And that is in the graduate students who committed to risking their education, position and already unacceptably low-wages against white supremacy while UNC administrators sustained their prolonged (and at this point unsurprising) cowardice.
Sunny Osment
Class of 2019
Women’s and Gender Studies Major
Global Studies Major
