College Students Are Told They Can’t Use American Flags In 9-11 Tribute…This Is What Happened Next
By Dreamer
It took the pressure of countless people on social media across America to convince the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana of what should have been self-evident to them in the first place: banning American flags during a 9/11 memorial is a profoundly unpatriotic gesture.
The school caved to a request by the University of Illinois College Republicans to plant American flags in the ground on campus this Friday — 2,977 in all, to commemorate all of the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
The College Republicans had announced the event on their Facebook page, but later had to issue a retraction, saying, “Developing Story: University of Illinois denies College Republicans permission to plant American Flags on the Quad for a 9/11 remembrance project. More details soon.”
The ban on using American flags for the remembrance lit up social media, and the university quickly caved. In an email sent to the group, school administrators used concerns over the campus’ irrigation system as their reason for denying the first request.
The letter explained that they had advised the group “it was against University Policy to stick anything in the ground due to the irrigation system and provided you with options as to what you could do as an alternative that involved using cups with sand and sticking the flags in them or foam with the same idea as well as cardboard or any other foundation or acceptable alternative that did not involve placing items in the ground.”
Disregarding the fact that administrators at the University of Illinois apparently don’t know what a run-on sentence is — you’d think they would have been able to find an English major to run it by — this still raises the question of how they would know that the College Republicans weren’t going to use said methods and cancelled it because of that.
Regardless, the university said in the email: “The event has been approved to continue on the basis on what we discussed and agreed upon and that was not to place anything in the ground.”
The College Republicans, on their Facebook page, said they were pretty certain that the school’s reversal didn’t have a whole lot to do with the irrigation system, crediting the massive wave of outrage the school’s decision had generated online.
“We just got the word that the University Administration has decided to revisit their policy on allowing us to continue with the 9/11 Remembrance Project,” the College Republicans wrote. “We don’t know yet what they have in mind, but this is certainly a result of the pressure that we’ve been building.
“Thank you all for your help and support,” they added (H/T BizPac Review).
Good for them. This is yet another example of what conservatives can do when we stick to our principles and take action to see them through. Rest assured, the next time University of Illinois administrators want to do something this stupid again, they’ll look back on this and think twice.
Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you support the University of Illinois College Republicans and their right to use flags in their 9/11 remembrance.
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