UNC student-athletes join the conversation over Silent Sam

Ezra Baeli-Wang poses with his gear in the fencing room in 2017. The former UNC and ACC Student-Athlete Advisory Committee President wrote an open letter to University officials against Silent Sam that has been signed by almost 300 current and former UNC student-athletes.

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When Ezra Baeli-Wang sat down Tuesday and wrote an open letter to UNC officials that he would later circulate to the UNC athletics community, he had no idea how it would be received by his peers.

A few days later, the petition written by the former North Carolina fencer and 2017 UNC and ACC Student-Athlete Advisory Committee Co-President and President, respectively, has been signed by more than 270 current and former UNC athletes who also oppose any plan that wouldfor teams to discuss racial issues as an athletics community more often.

When Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem, Jacobs said she and her volleyball teammates had a three-hour conversation about it as a team. They talked about disagreements over the kneeling and what it symbolized to Black athletes on the team, as well as protests within athletics.

These conversations can lead to greater understanding of perspectives about race and the statue, Baeli-Wang said. He also had two people who reached out to him and wanted to discuss why they felt differently than he did about the statue. They gave him a call to talk about it, and both sides walked away having learned something from the other.

“I had really good, interesting phone calls with two people about