UNC System reveals it gave additional $74,999 to Confederates to stop Silent Sam protests
The UNC System agreed to pay the N.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans $74,999 not to display flags and banners on university campuses.
That’s on top of the $2.5 million that UNC is giving the Confederate group for taking the Silent Sam Confederate statue that once was on the Chapel Hill campus.
Members of the UNC System Board of Governors members first revealed the $74,999 figure while trying to justify the UNC System’s deal with the Confederate group in an opinion piece that was published in The News & Observer on Monday.
Later in the day, the UNC System released a large batch of documents about the Silent Sam settlement. The documents note that in exchange for the $74,999, “SCV agreed that it will not display any Confederate flags, banners, or signs before, after, or in conjunction with any group event, meeting, or ceremony on the campus of or property controlled by the UNC System ... for five years.”
“Isn’t that a payoff?” UNC history professor Fitz Brundage said in an interview with The N&O. “I would like to hear the logic of why that was needed.”
“It would sound to me like other groups should start mobilizing on campus and walking around with flags because they too might be bought off,” said Brundage, who also called the payment “hush money.”
Durham attorney Greg Doucette had a similar reaction, saying it’s like a “mafia shakedown” and could incentivize other, potentially violent groups, to try to get a similar deal from the university.
Doucette also said the specific dollar amount was intentional.
When state institutions try to resolve potential litigation using public money they need approval from N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein’s office if the amount hits the $75,000 mark. This payment was just $1 under that threshold.
“The BOG can sneak that through without any accountability,” Doucette said.
Documents about Silent Sam deal
The UNC System’s release of documents late Monday afternoon came nearly three weeks after the Silent Sam settlement was reached. The documents shed some light on the process that was conducted behind closed doors with a timeline of events.
The UNC System detailed how the N.C. SCV can spend the $2.5 million to preserve and display Silent Sam. The trust agreement outlines that a trustee, Matthew McGonagle, can grant funds for the following needs:
Property acquisition and development to display the monument and/or construction costs to build a facility and maintain grounds to house the monument or a facility for use by the beneficiary at the site of the monument.
Utilities, taxes, maintenance, repair, refurbishment, renovation and insurance of the facility and monument.
Transportation expenses related to the refurbishment or repair of the monument.
Security costs, including hardware, software and monitoring services associated with the facility and monument.
Professional fees, including legal and financial, associated with the facility and monument.
“Such other reasonably necessary and appropriate costs and expenses as may arise from and/or relate to the foregoing activities.
The agreement also states: “No part of the assets or net earnings of the Trust shall inure at any time to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual, and no substantial part of the activities of the trust shall consist of carrying on propaganda or otherwise attempting to influence legislation.”
The primary purpose of the trust, signed by UNC System interim President Bill Roper and Board of Governors Chairman Randy Ramsey, is for the “maintenance, display, and preservation of the bronze statue of the confederate soldier,” the agreement says. The trust will be terminated if the monument is put up in any of the 14 North Carolina counties that have a UNC System campus.
Until Monday, UNC System leaders had kept the details quiet, leaving the public with questions of how the deal was negotiated, why they decided to compromise with the Confederate group and how the money will be administered.
The news of the settlement and the lack of transparency around it have prompted students, faculty and alumni to march through campus in protest, discuss its threat to student safety, and hold intense meetings to express their disappointment with newly appointed chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz’s response to it.
While many are pleased the statue will not return to UNC-Chapel Hill’s campus, some question the settlement’s validity and are taking legal action to stop the deal and recover the $2.5 million.
New response from Confederate group
UNC also released a letter Monday that was sent to the Board of Governors on Saturday from SCV leader Kevin Stone. In it, Stone reassured the board that despite remarks made in an earlier email to SCV members, the group will follow the terms and restrictions of the trust.
He said the group’s original goal was to have the memorial go back up, per the law, but conversations between the SCV and UNC System changed that.
“Both parties agreed the violent protests about Silent Sam over the past several years were not appropriate for a college campus,” Stone said. “Neither party wanted student, staff, or law enforcement to get hurt or worse over Silent Sam and it was with that spirit we went to the table to sort this problem out.”
Stone’s letter did not detail any plans of what the SCV would do with the monument or where it might go back up.
Stone previously called the settlement a “major strategic victory” that will “insure the future of Silent Sam” and the “legal and financial support for our continued and very strong actions in the future.”
However, The Daily Tar Heel, UNC’s student newspaper, reported that there are divisions within the Confederate group over the settlement after the paper spoke with SCV members, on the condition of anonymity. They said some oppose the deal and want to give the money back.
Those members “alleged financial improprieties among SCV leadership, referenced intermingling with gangs and hate groups, and described threats and slurs that have been issued toward members who raise questions,” according to the DTH.
Some told the DTH they fear the settlement “will empower what they see as the SCV’s most problematic wing: the mechanized cavalry” and help pay for a new headquarters and museum that will have “racist overtones.”
Stone’s letter to the board specifically said the group is not a white supremacy group and made that clear to UNC throughout their negotiations.
“Some who disagree with this settlement, have tried to say it was a deal between UNC and a white supremacy group. This is untrue. The SCV is not a white supremacy group and just because some people who disagree with us call us that does not make us one,” Stone wrote.
“The SCV does not allow white supremacists in our group and we do not endorse any such beliefs. Anyone who endorses any of these beliefs is not welcome in our group. It is important to note the SCV did not engage in any protests on campus related to this issue,” Stone wrote.
He said the SCV has been denounced by many groups, such as Alamance County Taking Back Alamance County, “whose beliefs and actions we do not share.”
An ‘unprincipled compromise’
The five UNC Board of Governors members tasked with finding a solution for Silent Sam submitted the opinion piece and said the deal giving the group the Confederate statue and $2.5 million to preserve it and build a facility to display it was “a lawful and lasting path that ensures the monument never returns to campus.”
This was the first time Jim Holmes, Darrell Allison, Wendy Murphy, Anna Nelson and Bob Rucho addressed the decision they helped make. All have declined to talk with an N&O reporter about the settlement.
“It’s as though the BOG decided that all that mattered here was getting the monument off the campus and every other consequence could be overlooked,” Brundage said.
They said they were “given the responsibility to resolve a deeply divisive and personal issue” and that “compromise was a necessity.”
But Brundage said the UNC System didn’t need to compromise with the SCV because it wouldn’t have been an automatic win for the SCV in court. He said if it was a compromise, it was an “unprincipled compromise.”
“They obviously got very, very poor advice on the likely reception of this compromise or of the optics of the Board of Governors subsidizing a Confederate heritage organization in the 21st century,” Brundage said. “I cannot imagine they could’ve talked to any qualified historian who would’ve not said this is a very bad idea.”
Brundage, whose research focuses on American history since the Civil War, particularly the American South, said the board is subsidizing a version of history that is not accepted by historians at major American universities.
He noted that the board members never separated themselves from the ideals of the Sons of Confederate veterans and did not address how the money will be administered.
Legal implications of the op-ed
In their attempt to explain their decision, the board members who wrote the op-ed also opened themselves up to legal consequences, according to Doucette.
Doucette said he sees it as an admission of guilt that the settlement was not lawfully done and that it’s a sham.
“It’s like people who think they’re above the law and flaunting it,” Doucette said.
The five board members said they were tasked with finding options, but the group never held a public meeting to discuss them.
A representative with the N.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans reached out to board member Bob Rucho in February requesting a meeting about the Silent Sam controversy, UNC System documents show.
The board members learned that the SCV threatened legal action that could bring the monument back to campus.
But the group was open to putting the monument back up in another location in exchange for “funding the transportation, repair, maintenance, security, and public display of the monument,” according to the board members, The SCV originally set that price at more than $5 million, plus annual recurring operating expenses, according to the board members.
Doucette said the details about negotiations show that the board members hashed all of this out in secret, which is a violation of open meetings law.
At some point, the cost dropped to $2.5 million and the five board members said they presented the proposed settlement to the board’s governance committee. They said that committee had the authority to settle the matter under Section 200.5 of the UNC Policy Manual.
Doucette and Hampton Dellinger, former state deputy attorney general for North Carolina, have both questioned whether that policy applies here. According to Doucette, they violated the policy because the full board never voted to delegate authority to the governance committee to approve the $2.5 million deal.
Twenty board members participated in that committee meeting, which was closed to the public. The deal was approved, and only one board member, Thom Goolsby, voted against it. After students toppled the statue in 2018, Goolsby was vocal in calling for it to be put back.
The lawsuit was filed that same day. Less than 10 minutes later, the superior court judge approved the settlement. The SCV took possession of the monument and the UNC System transferred $2.5 million to the charitable trust from interest accumulated in the UNC-Chapel Hill endowment, board members said in the letter. That money does not include tax dollars or tuition and fees.
The N.C. Attorney General’s office said there was no legal impediment to the proposed settlement and it was within the authority of the UNC System and the board to agree to it, according to the UNC System. However, Attorney General Josh Stein later criticized the deal saying the payment to the Confederate group was “excessive.”
Ramsey on Monday criticized legal action taken by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and further defended the board’s decision.
The national civil rights group is intervening in the lawsuit on behalf of UNC students and faculty to reopen the case and recover the $2.5 million.
“It’s irresponsible that the LCCRUL organization is working so hard to return Silent Sam to UNC-Chapel Hill, putting the safety of students, faculty, staff, and visitors at risk,” Ramsey said in a statement Monday. “The lawful settlement approved by the court ensures the monument never returns to any county where a UNC System institution is located, and the UNC System and the Board will continue to defend solutions that protect public safety.”
This story was originally published December 16, 2019 at 5:17 PM with the headline "UNC System reveals it gave additional $74,999 to Confederates to stop Silent Sam protests."
