Well! Hampshire College, the liberal-goo college in Massachusetts where students don't get grades in their "alternative curriculum" courses, has decided to rejoin the United States after all.
After two weeks of refusing to fly the American flag–as a protest against something or other that social justice warriors didn't like–Hampshire is once again allowing the Stars and Stripes wave over its campus. Inside Higher Education reports:
The following is the full statement of Jonathan Lash, president of the college, on the decision to resume flying the flag:
This morning we raised the United States flag to full staff at Hampshire College after a two-week discussion period about what the flag means to members of the Hampshire community. College leadership, including the Board of Trustees, had decided on Nov. 18 to lower the flag for a time to encourage uninhibited expression of deeply held viewpoints.
Those "deeply held viewpoints" surfaced at Hampshire–wouldn't you know–the day after Satan McDevil got himself elected president of the United States on Nov. 8. Says the Boston Globe:
Students lowered the flag to half-staff, the traditional symbol of national mourning, the day after the election.
Because voting in Beelzebub McHitlerpants as commander-in-chief was kind of like 9/11, at least at the snowflakeville that is Hampshire College.
Then:
An unknown party set the flag on fire on the night of Nov. 10. On Veterans Day, it was flown from the flagpole at the center of campus.
Soon after, the flag was again lowered to half-staff until Nov. 18, when Lash decided to remove it to “enable discussion” about the anger and fear many people felt following the election. Lash originally said the flag would not return until the spring semester at the earliest.
But–oops!–hundreds of protesting military veterans and others added their voices to the "discussion" by staging a demonstration at Hampshire:
The removal of the flag was an act of disrespect for the sacrifices of veterans and their families, said Gamalier Rosa, an Army veteran who served one tour in Iraq in 2010 and helped organize the protest.
“Our flag is a symbol of our country. Our clearest message is that we ask others to respect the flag as we do,” said Rosa, who helped organize the protest.
President Lash, as usual, muttered some more words about students' hurt feelz :
Jonathan Lash, president of Hampshire College, said the college had taken the flag down because students felt it was a symbol of the mistreatment of marginalized groups in the United States, including people of color. He said he expected to eventually put the flag back.
But since then, Lash apparently decided that "eventually" might be a little too far off in the future, given the poor optics of a flagless Hampshire College. Hence his most recent statement, reported in Inside Higher Ed:
We acted solely to facilitate much-needed dialogue on our campus about how to dismantle the bigotry that is prevalent in our society. We understand that many who hold the flag as a powerful symbol of national ideals and their highest aspirations for the country — including members of our own community — felt hurt by our decisions, and that we deeply regret.
Hampshire, which opened its doors in 1970, was one of several "non-traditional" institutions of higher learning that got started during the Sixties (see Evergreen State College in Washington and the University of California-Santa Cruz), when progessive administrators decided that conventional universities weren't churning out enough hippies. They seem to have gotten their wish, for there are no flower children more floral than the easily bruised blossoms of Hampshire.