CHAPEL HILL, N.C. _ The University of North Carolina system Board of Governors rejected a recommendation Friday that UNC-Chapel Hill build a $5.3 million history center to house the disputed Silent Sam statue.
Instead, a committee was formed to come up with a new proposal for the Confederate monument by March 15. Board of Governors Chairman Harry Smith said the costly plan for the center was "pretty tough for a lot of us to swallow."
He also said the UNC board did not want to rush the decision.
"We're going to go back to the drawing board in a team-like approach and try to get it right, working together in a very healthy process," he said. "The goal, again, is simply to do the right thing."
Smith named a committee of five Board of Governors members to work with UNC-Chapel Hill officials on a new plan.
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt said she appreciated having more time now to come up with another relocation plan. She conceded that the recommendation she and the campus trustees made this month for the new history center "hasn't satisfied anyone, and we recognize that."
Folt said the work ahead by the new committee will include fully exploring off-campus options for the statue, which had been the strong preference of her administration and the campus Board of Trustees. She cited as an example the North Carolina Museum of History, which had been mentioned in the initial recommendation as a possibility.
Smith said moving the statue off campus would require a change in a 2015 state law that prevents historic monuments from being moved in most cases. The committee will decide if that's what it wants to do.
"If that's so, they'll make a decision whether to engage with lawmakers in Raleigh and have the conversation and see if they can get traction on that," Smith said.
Citing personnel and attorney-client privilege exceptions in the state's open meetings law, the board discussed Silent Sam privately.
UNC President Margaret Spellings, at her last Board of Governors meeting before she steps down next year, said she and Smith met for two hours Thursday with dozens of faculty, staff and students on the Chapel Hill campus about their concerns regarding Silent Sam. She called the conversation "deeply productive and thoughtful."
Smith said he learned a lot from students who discussed their anxiety about having Silent Sam anywhere on campus. "When you hear the students speak about their fear, safety and concern, it's pretty real," he said.
Leaders from the Chapel Hill campus faced intense opposition to their proposal to create a $5.3 million history center on campus to house the statue and provide its full historical context. Critics said the building would be a shrine to the Confederate monument and that it would present a continuing safety risk.
William Sturkey, a UNC professor of history, said the UNC Board of Governors has so far viewed Silent Sam only as a political issue.
"They're costing us a great deal of money, they are helping to poison the campus climate and they're damaging our reputation by limiting the potential outcomes of the decision," he said in an interview. "The university should be given a clear path to determine what's best for the university."
The monument, which was toppled from a campus pedestal by protesters in August, has been the source of conflict and debate for years. But in the current semester, the university has been consumed by it. The issue now has the university in the midst of a strike, with graduate student teaching assistants threatening to withhold undergraduate grades at the end of the semester.
UNC Faculty Chairwoman Leslie Parise wrote to faculty and graduate students, saying that while many agree with the aims of the grade-withholding strike, there is concern that it "will do much more harm than good in helping us reach this goal."
Smith said he hoped the grade strike would not materialize. "It's our hope we don't get there," he said. "We can't work under threats and intimidation."
About 100 students, UNC faculty members and others opposed to the statue set up in front of the UNC Center for School Leadership Development Friday morning. One person was arrested as police moved people from the front of the building.
Carrboro resident Margaret Herring said she has been protesting Silent Sam for more than a year.
"I think it's great," Herring said of the protest. "I love that the black faculty and sports figures have come out against it."
