Who's Who with Silent Sam Now

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Dave Dewitt at WUNC has written a great guide to the main players in the current iteration of the Silent Sam drama. Here's my take on that reportage:
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This is a terrific introduction to the players in the Silent Sam snafu. Thanks to Dave Dewitt for his work.
I would suggest a few additional, related considerations that readers should be able to assess from news reports on UNC BoG happenings over the past 9 months, and how developments unfold over the next 3 months:
-- The solution to Silent Sam is way bigger than concerns in Chapel Hill. Sam has to be removed by way of some kind of legal workaround or a modification of the monuments legislation. If Sam goes back up at Chapel Hill, lawsuits for violations of equal protection and equal opportunity provisions of the US and NC constitutions would likely result. Nonpartisans on the BoG -- currently in the majority, and their numbers are growing as members are becoming more sensitive to past excesses -- will be working hard to avoid a result that disrupts campus stability, but they will want something that makes it possible for every campus to manage these kinds of issues.
-- If Harry Smith the personality (as in, like, his obsession with ECU) can get out of the way of Harry Smith the evolving BoG Chair, he might be able to continue moving the Board away from its hyperpartisan past. Most notably, Smith's critical comments on Fetzer's WCU chancellor search interference and Joe Knott’s silly proposal for a conservative (sic?) research center, his lavish praise for the ECSU rebound and now-Chancellor Karrie Dixon, and his all-too-apparent alliance with Spellings and Roper (whose appointment as Interim so quickly after Spellings’ resignation announcement suggests a move to outflank Board radicals) all point to Harry moving in the right direction. But he still has his hands full with the legislative leadership and their patrons on the BoG.
-- That said, the membership of the committee on Silent Sam indicates that the radicals are being marginalized. Nelson has unimpeachable integrity, Murphy is working hard to keep the radicals at arms-length, Jim Holmes has been saying lots of things that indicate he doesn’t like the BoG’s over-reaching proclivities (and I think he may even regret being tagged with the leadership of the Poverty Center shutdown, especially since Steve Long was the real spear-man on that action), and Allison is slowly but steadily losing his reluctance to criticize hard-right initiatives. Rucho is really the only reactionary on the committee, and he is likely a token who can be contained by clever use of parliamentary maneuvering.
Look for the committee to solicit widely for input from the Chapel Hill campus, but recommend a solution for Sam that addresses the much larger, system wide implications of the monuments legislation (per the first point, above). The student member of the BoG (not Chapel Hill students per se) should be representing a ‘student perspective’ as the committee moves toward, and faculty perspectives on policy formulations should come from the system Faculty Assembly leadership, not the Chapel Hill faculty.
In the last analysis, it is the legislature, not the BoG, that is very likely to be the obstacle to moving forward. When (if? though they just can’t control themselves) the lawmakers start interfering again, that will be the test to see if the BoG is moving away from its hyperpartisan past and governance gaffes.

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