Campus Reform correspondent and Hofstra University student Richard Caldwell petitioned to keep a Thomas Jefferson statue on campus after a group of protesters attempted to have it removed.

“Last March, around this exact same time, there was a big issue about this and we made the counter-petition. I made the counter-protest, and we had meetings with the administrators, and after three months of debate they decided that the statue was going to stay up,” Caldwell told Fox & Friends Wednesday.

“Now, all of a sudden, it seems to be an issue again, but I believe this issue has already been solved seeing as how they already decided they wanted to keep it up.”

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Caldwell said his love of history was the driving force behind his involvement and that Jefferson’s shortcomings aren’t a valid excuse to erase him from existence.

“I’m a history major, so I love history and I study it very closely,” he said. “Thomas Jefferson was a great man. He wrote the Declaration of Independence. He instilled many of the ideals of freedom and equality that we use in our society today, and we also have to acknowledge that he had the past history of slavery, which we look back and say it was horrible today, but at the time it was normal.”

“If you remove the statue, you remove the conversation about it — you remove the history about it,” he continued. “And the only way that we could move forward from the past is talking about history and acknowledging things happened, while also looking at the greater picture and seeing all the good that he did.”

Hofstra released a statement in response to the renewed protests:

“After the conversations a year ago with a variety of stakeholders about the Thomas Jefferson statue on campus, Hofstra University’s president announced in May 2018 that the statue will remain where it is,” the statement read.

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