CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ A group of 88 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill alumni and donors have taken legal action to urge a judge to void UNC's agreement to pay $2.5 million and give the Silent Sam Confederate monument to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The group filed an amicus brief in Orange County Superior Court on Wednesday asking the judge to set aside the consent agreement that authorized the deal.
The alumni and donors argue the settlement is a "misuse of university funds" that "seriously damages the reputation of the University, which should be committed to historical truth and opposed to modern-day white supremacy."
The 88 range from 1956 graduate and former UNC Board of Governors Chairman Sam Poole to members of the UNC Black Pioneers, who represent the first generation of African Americans to attend UNC, to Clay Hackney, a Morehead-Cain Scholar who graduated in 2015 and is now studying at Harvard Law School.
Other notable alumni include former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court James Exum, former United States Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, former Congressman Mel Watt, former Chairman of the Indigent Defense Services Commission Joe Cheshire, retired Superior Court judges Karl Adkins and Howard Manning Jr., Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch, fashion designer Alexander Julian, and Hall of Fame soccer player Carla Overbeck.
Many of them donate regularly and several have led UNC fundraising efforts for capital campaigns or made major gifts to the university that have created endowed scholarships.
The brief, with assistance from UNC historian Cecelia Moore, argues that UNC has always owned the Silent Sam statue and neither the United Daughters of the Confederacy nor the SCV has any ownership interest. That means the SCV had no standing to file the initial lawsuit, and the trial judge had no jurisdiction to enter the consent judgment in the case, they argue.
They claim Judge Allen Baddour, also a UNC alumnus, did not have "a complete and accurate factual record" during the initial hearing and that the information in the brief gives him the facts to inform his decision at a hearing on this issue on Feb. 12.
The group is represented by two UNC graduates, William Taylor, with Zuckerman Spaeder in Washington D.C., and Burton Craige, with Patterson Harkavy in Chapel Hill.
They are joining a national civil rights group and The Daily Tar Heel, UNC-Chapel Hill's student newspaper, in their legal efforts to stop the $2.5 million payment from UNC to a trust for the SCV to preserve and display the Confederate statue.
The UNC students and faculty represented by the civil rights group also filed a brief Wednesday to question the court's jurisdiction in the case between the UNC System and the SCV.
Their brief states that the court lacks jurisdiction for three reasons, including that the SCV doesn't have ownership interest in the Confederate monument and lacks legal standing to pursue relief because the matter is not an "actual controversy" as required by law.
The group originally sought to intervene in the case and reopen it, stop the deal and recover the $2.5 million. Baddour denied their action, but kept the case open to review additional briefings and determine whether the SCV had the standing to bring the lawsuit.
Silent Sam stood in the heart of UNC's campus until it was illegally torn down by protesters in August 2018. After more than a year of debate, the UNC system negotiated the deal with the SCV behind closed doors and settled the case in November 2019.
The decision prompted protests from students and faculty and drew public criticism across the state and nation.
While there are rules set for how the SCV can use the money, some UNC students and faculty are concerned the $2.5 million will be spent to promote violence. They fear the payment has made the SCV "a very wealthy white supremacist organization" and will boost the Confederate group's cause.
