UNC Will Pay $2.5 Million to Remove Confederate Statue from Campus

Police stand guard after the confederate statue known as Silent Sam was toppled by protest
AP Photo/Gerry Broome
Tom Ciccotta

The University of North Carolina system announced this week that they will pay $2.5 million to remove and relocate the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument from the Chapel Hill campus.

According to a report by Insider Higher Ed, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has announced that it will spend $2.5 million to relocate the “Silent Sam” Confederate monument from campus after the statue was the center of a scandal this past year.

As part of a legal settlement, the university will give the statue to the North Carolina Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans. The university agreed to pay a substantial sum to fund the relocation of the monument.

The university declared in the settlement that they will use $2.5 million of nonstate money to house and display the monument in its new location. The North Carolina Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans will not be permitted to house the monument in any of the 14 counties in North Carolina that contains a UNC campus.

Under the terms of the agreement on the Silent Sam statue:

  • SCV is declared the owner of Silent Sam.
  • The university will turn over the statue to SCV.
  • SCV will maintain the statue “outside any of the 14 counties currently containing a UNC System constituent institution.”
  • Using $2.5 million in nonstate funds, the university “will fund a charitable trust to be held independently by a nonparty trustee … the proceeds of which may only be used for certain limited expenses related to the care and preservation of the monument, including potentially a facility to house and display the monument.”

Breitbart News reported in August that a group of leftist student activists knocked down the statue during a protest event. The student newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill posted a photo on their Twitter account of students burying the statue’s head in the mud.

Stay tuned to Breitbart News for more updates on the story.

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