Zachary Kosnitzky

Opinion contributor

On the night of Monday, Aug. 20, students and activists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) tore down Silent Sam, a monument on campus to alumni who fought and died for the Confederacy. For many people on campus, Silent Sam is seen as a symbol of tradition and state history. Many also recognize it as a distinctive campus landmark like the Old Well and the bell tower. But for those with a deep emotional investment in removing the statue, Silent Sam is seen as veneration of white supremacy.

I was at the protest all night. I witnessed everything. What we saw Monday night was a classic example of mob rule.

Outside agitators with outsize influence

Since attending Carolina, I have been a voice against the demonstrations to destroy Silent Sam. Covering the event with my cameraman, I joined a group of protesters gathered outside the Chapel Hill court house around 7 p.m. that night. We listened to speeches from organizers about UNC’s “inherent white supremacy” and “our racial capitalist system.”

To much applause, two graduate students vowed to wear nooses around their necks until Silent Sam fell. They encouraged us to wear pins depicting a lynching and handed out bandannas for the protesters to obscure their faces. The group then marched across the street toward the monument.

Chanting and throwing smoke bombs, a few agitators at the front violently clashed with police while fights broke out around us. A masked group of around 50 people surrounded the statue and erected banners to obscure their work. People outside the inner circle used megaphones to lead chants like “Cops and the Klan go hand in hand” and “Nazis go home.” I looked around the park, but saw no Nazis present.

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The official count from the chancellor’s office stands at about 250 protesters. At least half of them appeared not to be students.

I spoke to one protester who identified himself as a comrade in some kind of “anarcho-communist organization.” He had just come from Washington, D.C., and seemed to be travelling around the country joining left-wing demonstrations. He was with other protesters who certainly were not students but they stood shoulder to shoulder against the police present that evening just the same.

When I asked the protester if he was close to UNC or Chapel Hill he said, “I wish I was.”

“So you just bused in with your buddies from D.C.?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” he answered.

When night finally fell, the protesters were able to physically pull the statue from its platform. Cheers erupted as the metal groaned and seemed to give. Shortly thereafter, Silent Sam came crashing into the dirt. Skirmishes broke out among the protesters and the few counter-protesters as police rushed to the scene to check for the injured.

All of this the night before roughly 5,000 new undergraduates pulled on their backpacks for their first day of college classes.

Police stand by while public property destroyed

Shockingly, police stood back apathetically for most of the night. I asked a policeman what their plan was if the demonstrators intended to tear down the statute. He was frustrated with the question and the police clearly had no intention of protecting the statue. Instead, they chose to sacrifice Silent Sam.

Last year, police came clad in riot gear and fencing was put up to defend the property. This time, it was total anarchy. Only one arrest was made by the end of the night, though additional charges were filed against protesters not affiliated with the university in the following days. After all the controversy, abuse and drama, it seemed like the officers were just happy to let the mob have their way.

How the administration chooses to handle this situation is more important than it seems. The point of keeping Silent Sam standing is not to offend African-American students. It would be ridiculous to assume that North Carolina’s Democratic governor, its overwhelmingly left-leaning faculty, and the governors and trustees responsible for Silent Sam’s preservation up to this point are all white supremacists.

Nevertheless, I implore them to continue to take a hard line against this incident. A 2015 state law prevents removing, relocating or altering monuments that are on public property without permission from the N.C. Historical Commission. If no students, faculty agitators or outsiders are held accountable, we will be setting a dangerous precedent.

This was an angry mob composed of a minority of the student body along with outside activists. What will the police and administration choose to do the next time they rally to destroy something they find problematic?

I am not opposed to removing Silent Sam in principle. Instead, my objection is to an angry mob tearing down and destroying state property by force. Rational, deliberative members of the UNC and Chapel Hill communities should use legal mechanisms to relocate the statue, if that is what the public decides it wants. That decision should not be made by professional activists bused in from other parts of the country.

The university sits upstream of regular society in many ways. The students who now attend our colleges will, in a few years, hold positions of power in the real world. If UNC’s leaders do nothing, they will be broadcasting the message that anger is proportional to righteousness in the realm of politics. They will blur the line between civil disobedience and anarchy. Moreover, they will imprint those messages onto the coming generation.

Zachary Kosnitzky is a UNC student in the class of 2020. He is a columnist for the campus paper, The Daily Tar Heel, and is an online editor for the conservative/libertarian journal, Carolina Review.