IRVINE, CA – A ban of the American flag in a California college’s lobby has sparked outrage across the country, even as the school works feverishly to clean up the public relations nightmare.
Last week, six undergraduate members of the University of California-Irvine’s (UCI) student-government Legislative Council passed a bill that bans the display of all flags – including the American Flag – in the common lobby area of the student government offices.
Over the weekend, members of the executive cabinet of the Associated Students of UC Irvine met Saturday in an emergency session to reverse the flag ban.
The UCI administration said in a statement that “this misguided decision was not endorsed or supported in any way by the campus leadership, the University of California, or the broader student body. The views of a handful of students passing a resolution do not represent the opinions of the nearly 30,000 students on this campus, and have no influence on the policies and practices of the university.”
In an explanation from UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman:
When tens of thousands of young people are brought together and encouraged to explore new ideas, it is inevitable that small numbers of them are, on occasion, going to express views that are unconventional and even outrageous.
A few days ago, on a campus of more than 30,000 students, six of them expressed the view that no flags — not the American flag, and also not the flag of any other nation — should be displayed in a very small interior lobby area of the offices of student government. If these students were acting in a private capacity and expressing personal views then there would be no reason to pay attention. But these six students were acting in an official capacity, as members of a small sub-set of our student government known as Legislative Council, and it was outrageous and indefensible that they would question the appropriateness of displaying the American flag on this great campus.
The administration swiftly, strongly, and publicly denounced the action. Importantly, UCI students also immediately began to express their disappointment and outrage at the actions of these six students. Our elected student body president condemned the action, calling the decision “horrible” and “an attack on American values.” Those news organizations that sought a truthful account of the issue, and that interviewed UCI students, found one student after another saying that the views of these six did not represent the students at UCI.
As a formal expression of the true views of the UCI community, the Executive Cabinet of our student government has now vetoed this resolution, stating that they “fundamentally disagree with the actions taken by the ASUCI Legislative Council” on this issue. I applaud this action.
