From a webcam in his office, Thom Goolsby, a member of the UNC-system Board of Governors, chastised UNC administration in a three-minute video, calling their Silent Sam relocation proposal cowardly and illegal.
“If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone,” he said.
The video included the phone number for the North Carolina General Assembly, and a heeding from Goolsby for viewers to demand their representatives to stop UNC in its relocation of Silent Sam.
“Instead of putting Silent Sam back up as the law requires, they're attempting to misread the law,” he said, “and ask the Board of Governors to move the statue or give approval for its removal.”
Goolsby referenced a clause in North Carolina's Heritage Protection Act of 2015 dealing with objects of remembrance, specifically the exceptions permitting their movement: “An object of remembrance for which a building inspector or similar official has determined poses a threat to public safety because of an unsafe or dangerous condition,” reads one of the exceptions.
Goolsby has discussed the Heritage Protection Act in the past. On Aug. 23, three days after Silent Sam was toppled, he released a video about the law, titled "Silent Sam Will Be Reinstalled as Required by State Law."
In that video, he referred to a section of the act that states "an object of remembrance that is temporarily relocated shall be returned to its original location within 90 days of completion of the project that required its temporary removal."
In his December video, he said UNC’s attempt to invoke the argument that the statue creates a dangerous condition is a misreading of the law.
“That is a safety concern based upon perhaps a new road, maybe problems with the ground, any number of things,” he said. “It is not outside radicals coming on your campus, destroying property.”
