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Columbus State removing Christopher Columbus statue

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Jennifer Smolajsmola@dispatch.comView CommentsThe 40-foot Christopher Columbus won’t be standing tall over the Columbus State Community College campus much longer.College officials announced plans Tuesday to move the 20-ton statue from its campus in the coming days.“The removal of the Christopher Columbus statue is a symbolic gesture of our commitment to our College community to continue and accelerate the fight against systemic racism,” Columbus State President David Harrison said in a written statement.“Recent events, including the senseless deaths of African-Americans and the resulting anguish across the nation, compelled us to act on a years-long internal dialogue about the statue and the message it sends in our community,” Harrison said.The statue has been on Columbus State’s Downtown campus since 1988. The college pledged to complete the statue’s removal within the next two weeks.The bottom half of the statue was covered in a blue wrap Tuesday, concealing vandalism that appeared sometime over the weekend, Columbus State spokesman Brent Wilder said. have been vandalized, toppled and removed nationwide in recent weeks amid protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.Columbus, the Italian explorer, is celebrated as the first person to discover the Western Hemisphere, but others made the voyage before him, and Native American tribes had inhabited North and South America for centuries. Protesters have accused Columbus of genocide and exploiting Native people.There are at least the largest American city bearing his name. Both are Downtown, with one in front of City Hall and the other outside the Statehouse.The Capital Square Review and Advisory Board has received only one complaint about the Statehouse statue recently via email.“There is no intention right now for us to remove the statue,” said Laura Battocletti, executive director of the board. She said there’s also currently no internal discussion about the statue, but conversations could be possible when the Board of Directors meets in the future.As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 2,600 had signed a The petition said Columbus left a legacy of “enslavement, murder, looting and destruction of human beings in North America.”By Tuesday afternoon, Columbus City Council President Pro Tem Elizabeth Brown called for the removal of the City Hall statue and thanked Columbus State for taking the first step toward removing its statue, which Brown said on Twitter, “amounts to a totem of systemic racism and oppression.”“City Hall must be next,” she said.Mayor Andrew J. Ginther’s spokeswoman, Robin Davis, said Tuesday that “there are many perspectives“ on the Christopher Columbus statue outside of City Hall.“To some it represents patriarchy, oppression and divisiveness,” Davis said in an email early Tuesday evening. “We are evaluating the best way to acknowledge the pain that symbols like this evoke, while assuring this conversation does not let us lose focus on addressing the racial divide in our community and across the country.”The Columbus State statue was created by sculptor Alfred Solani in 1959, and was first installed in an Illinois park before being moved to Columbus State. At the time, the college paid $25,000 to build a pedestal and $25,000 to repair and restore it, according to Dispatch archives.Columbus sculptor Alfred Tibor spent months repairing the statue before its Columbus State installation. Tibor believed someone had originally miscalculated while cutting marble in Italy, resulting in the statue having a flat head. His work then included adding a piece of marble to make the top of Columbus’ head rounder, according to Dispatch archives.Now, the statue will be dismantled and stored. Physical details and logistics for the removal are still being planned, Harrison said.“In taking this action, we are being mindful of societal change and forward movement,” Columbus State Board of Trustees President Anthony Joseph said in a written statement. “We do not seek to erase history, but to make an intentional shift in what we visibly honor and celebrate as an institution.”In the college’s news release, Columbus State professor Reuel Barksdale recalled how the statue was described “as a celebration of exploration and the never-ending desire to become what we had yet to become” at his faculty orientation nearly 25 years ago.“The removal of this statue declares that this institution has in fact moved closer to becoming what we have yet to become,” Barksdale said.Dispatch Reporter George Shillcock contributed to this story.jsmola@dispatch.com@jennsmolaView Comments

Jennifer Smolajsmola@dispatch.comView CommentsThe 40-foot Christopher Columbus won’t be standing tall over the Columbus State Community College campus much longer.College officials announced plans Tuesday to move the 20-ton statue from its campus in the coming days.“The removal of the Christopher Columbus statue is a symbolic gesture of our commitment to our College community to continue and accelerate the fight against systemic racism,” Columbus State President David Harrison said in a written statement.“Recent events, including the senseless deaths of African-Americans and the resulting...

Columbus State removing Christopher Columbus statue

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