The Board of Governors rejected a plan to build a $5.3 million home for the controversial statue, university spokesperson Carly Miller told CNN on Friday.
The board gave administrators until March 15 to develop another recommendation.
“The $5.3 million is, I think, pretty tough for a lot of us to swallow,” he said.
The university tweeted Friday afternoon the board’s vote “gives Carolina more time to review relocation options for the Confederate Monument and offer a revised recommendation. An off-campus solution remains our strong preference and we will work until March 15 to more fully explore this option.”
“The plan we put forward .. hasn’t satisfied anyone, and we recognize that,” Folt said in a statement, adding that UNC is the only university in North Carolina that has anything “closely resembling” the statue.
“The burden of the statue has been and still is disproportionately shouldered by African-Americans. No university today would even consider placing such an artifact on their campuses,” she said. “The decisions that will be made about this statue will have lasting ramifications for the university and the state.”
Statue honored the Confederacy
Silent Sam was built at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was dedicated in 1913 to remember the “sons of the University who died for their beloved Southland 1861-1865,” says UNC’s website.
At its dedication, Confederate veteran Julian Shakespeare Carr praised the Confederate army for “sav[ing] the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” according to the university’s archives.
Ezra Baeli-Wang told CNN Friday he created the petition Tuesday. Baeli-Wang was on the university’s fencing team from 2013 to 2017.
“I thought it would be a special thing to get UNC athletes past and present to add their voices to the variety of university groups on campus,” he said.
As of Friday, the petition had more than 200 signatures, Baeli-Wang said.
“Athletes have a unique platform,” he said. “Those with a unique platform should amplify the voices that aren’t usually heard, the voices that we most need to hear and the marginalized voices.”
CNN’s Keith Allen and Eric Levenson contributed to this report.
Source : CNN