Update to this story.
Silent Sam’s takedown was the result of a “sophisticated political agenda” by “non-student radicals” that police let happen, a UNC Board of Governors member says in an 8-minute video he posted Thursday.
“The destruction of Silent Sam is not as you are led to believe,” Thom Goolsby said in the video posted to his YouTube channel.
Goolsby said the statue’s fate was not the result of a student-led, spontaneous uprising, but that “crime and riot on our UNC-Chapel Hill campus” was the “work of outside, non-student radicals carrying out what is shown to be a pre-planned and sophisticated political agenda.”
Goolsby also accused the police present that night of inaction that helped bring the statue down.
“If you’ve heard that the police weren’t ready for what was going on; they were surprised — no surprise,” Goolsby said in the video.
The plan to topple Silent Sam was “put out all over” Orange and Durham counties ahead of time, Goolsby said, and was “so planned out” there were bandanas that read “Silent Sam must fall.”