Students carry Confederate flag to Dean appearance

HANOVER, N.H. -- A group of students who attended Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's appearance at Dartmouth College on Thursday unveiled Confederate flags as he was introduced.

The group of about nine students, whom fellow students and Dean campaign staffers identified as conservative activists, did not otherwise disrupt the former Vermont governor's speech about paying for higher education. And Dean did not acknowledge them or refer to controversy surrounding his recent remark that he wanted to attract voters with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.

The students sat with the flags draped across their shoulders throughout Dean's appearance.

Dean declined to comment as he left the college auditorium where he delivered his speech. Spokesman Matthew Gardner later dismissed the incident as "a political trick. And it's sad that whoever is behind this felt forced to resort to misrepresentation."

The demonstrators refused to say whether they were affiliated with any college organizations, even though one of their names appeared in the conservative publication Dartmouth Review as a contributor.

Student Xi Huang said he and his fellow demonstrators wanted to make a statement about what they felt was Dean's inappropriate use of the Confederate flag image.

"He said that for six months, and just recently gave an apology," said Huang, 19, of Boston. "We felt his apology was insufficient."

Dean's appearance also was marked by posters around the Dartmouth campus bearing the Confederate flag image. The posters were identical to ones Dean's campaign had printed, except that they were against a backdrop of the Confederate flag and they said "sponsored by young Democrats."

The president of Young Democrats at Dartmouth, Paul Heintz of Cambridge, Mass., said his group had nothing to do with the posters.

"The idea that we would have any part in using that symbol in any sort of way is preposterous," he said.

Heintz, who said he supports Dean, doubted that the incident was organized by any of the other Democratic campaigns. "I would say it has a lot more to do with a very small number of students who are socially conservative," Heintz said.

Another student in the group with the flags, Jonathan Beilin, 18, of Claremont, Calif., said that the incident was not orchestrated by any other campaign. But he refused to say how the students got together on the idea.

Huang said that his interest in the demonstration was to make a statement about stereotyping.

"What's the difference between stereotyping a Southerner with a flag and stereotyping Asians? We're using it as something to draw attention."

Dean generated a firestorm of criticism when he told the Des Moines Register, in an interview published Nov. 1, that he wanted to be "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks." He had made similar statements earlier in the campaign.

Several of Dean's rivals for the Democratic nomination attacked him for the remark after the Register story, saying the Confederate flag was a painful symbol to African-Americans and that the remark had demeaned many progressive-minded white Southerners as well.

Dean apologized for the remark on Nov. 5, saying, "I deeply regret the pain that I may have caused" people who were offended by it.

He explained that he was trying to say Democrats need to reach out to white Southerners who in recent years have abandoned their party to vote Republican.

Laurel Stavis, a spokeswoman for Dartmouth College, said it wasn't clear to her whether the demonstration or the posters violated school policy.

"There's no speech code," she said. "There's a difference between speech and behavior. We do have a college regulation that speaks to offensive behavior, but not to offensive speech."

Thursday, November 13, 2003
Students call Dean posters a hoax
By Steven Orbuch, The Dartmouth Staff

Students from Generation Dean denied responsibility for the posters.

Yesterday morning, Dartmouth students awoke to find posters -- complete with Confederate flag backgrounds -- advertising today's lecture by Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on bulletin boards across campus. The poster, which purported to be an ad created by the Dean campaign on campus, was a hoax and neither Generation Dean nor the Young Democrats was involved in its creation, according to Young Democrats President Paul Heintz '06.

"Whoever is doing this is engaging in the most negative form of campaigning imaginable or participating in the most awful sort of prank," Heintz said.

Heintz said that he found out about the posters early Wednesday morning via blitzmail. Heintz also said that he is particularly concerned that many students actually think that the flyers were made by either the Young Democrats or Generation Dean.

"I actually got a blitz to the Young Democrats account saying that they were offended by the posters that we put up," Heintz said.

Though the posters had a visible presence throughout campus, Heintz said that he was uncertain as to how many of these posters were actually distributed.

He said, however, that he is almost sure that most of them have been taken down because he blitzed the presidential candidate campaign managers on campus asking them to remove any of the posters that they saw.

According to Heintz, campaign managers have informed him that they had located and removed the Confederate flag posters in locations such as Novack Café, Baker and Berry Libraries and a handful of dormitories.

Cayelan Carey '06 of Generation Dean said that she thinks that the poster issue has been drastically blown out of proportion. She said that she doubts that the poster will have a negative impact on Dean support. "If someone stops and sees the sign then they might be confused if they are not familiar with the campaign," Carey said.

Carey said that the premise of there actually being a Confederate flag on a Dean campaign poster is essentially a joke.

According to Carey, if one were to actually sit down and read the speech by Dean which the flag is poking fun at they would understand that the accusations implied by use of a Confederate flag on the posters are completely false.

Most people who were aware of the Dean poster hoax said that they consider it to be an gross affront to Generation Dean and the Young Democrats.

Bush campaign representative and Dartmouth Review Publisher Michael Ellis '06 said that the poster was unethical even though he thought the Confederate backdrop was a clever way to critique Dean's recent "demeaning comments about southerners," because it falsely represented Generation Dean as its creator. "It is wrong to put someone's name on something that they did not sponsor," Ellis said.

Greg Klein '04 of Generation Dean also said that he was troubled by the fact that someone tried to pass off the posters as an actual Dean advertisement. However, Klein said that he was not worried that the posters may have been meant to insult his student group.

"This posters speaks more of the person who created it than of whom it is directed at," Klein said.

PROTESTERS 'FLAG DOWN' DEAN IN N.H.
New York Post ^ | 11/14/03 | DEBORAH ORIN

Posted on 11/14/2003 2:28 AM EST by kattracks

November 14, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Some Dartmouth College students unfurled Confederate flags to embarrass Democratic 2004 front-runner Howard Dean when he spoke at the New Hampshire campus yesterday. The nine students were reacting to Dean's vow to be the presidential candidate for white Southerners with rebel flags on their pickup trucks. Dean belatedly apologized, but many critics weren't satisfied.

"We felt his apology was insufficient," said student Xi Huang, 19, of Boston.

The students stood with Confederate flags draped over their shoulders when Dean was introduced.

In his speech, Dean proposed repealing President Bush's tax cuts so college students could get $10,000 yearly in federal aid.

The flag flap - and Dean's initial refusal to apologize - sparked questions about his temperament, but didn't stop two unions with many minority members - the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and the Service Employees International Union - from endorsing him this week.

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