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Op-ed: One legal opinion on Silent Sam doesn't matter

silent sam law cartoon.jpg

The op-ed published Feb. 21, 2018, offered by Prof. Eric Muller of UNC Law School is yet another shining example of a "single legal opinion." By the way, what do you have when you get three lawyers in the same room? Six different opinions!  

Obviously the professor is only willing to share one of his opinions through his self-described "little outline." If we do not agree with him, the inference is that we are too dumb or too stupid to understand things, even when offered to us in layman's terms.  

My response is this: If lawyers clearly wrote the laws, most lawyers would be unnecessary, which likely would not bode well for him and his ilk. That being the case, the rest of us normal folks would not need them to unravel their various balls of confusion. Furthermore, they wouldn't be needed to teach their confusing legal jargon to students, all while taking money from parents (tax dollars!) in the process. 

The professor asks his cute little question following Rule 3b of his outline: "Did you catch that last line?" What the professor then proceeds to make clear is his answer to his own asked question.  

That answer? It is the intent to foment his anger ("I loathe what Silent Sam stands for") and to perpetuate anger through violence on campus against a statue, against the University and against "The Board of Governors, or the State or some other political subdivision of the State..." So don't be surprised...

The Silent Sam statue on the University campus was erected and dedicated "TO THE SONS OF THE UNIVERSITY ... IN ANSWER TO THE CALL OF THEIR COUNTRY AND WHOSE LIVES TAUGHT ... THAT DUTY IS THE SUBLIMEST WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE." Read the inscription. It's on the statue.

If the "professor" loathes such admirable qualities found in students and citizens alike, if he holds such great disdain for those who felt led, and those who continue even today to feel led, to further the cause of The University, then perhaps the "professor" should turn in his tenure badge and go elsewhere to profess.  

If the "professor" decides to remain at the University, perhaps he should confine his mean-spirited, inflammatory rhetoric to himself, done in his own private quarters and not at taxpayers expense while professing at "the People's University."

Steve Sheffield

Class of '74

Wilmington

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