Confederate flag in dorm roils Bryn Mawr campus

Philly.com ^

[Phillyred]

Two students at Bryn Mawr College tacked up a Confederate flag in their dormitory hall and taped a "Mason-Dixon line" across the floor - a move they said was merely a display of their Southern pride.

But that display sent the small Main Line women's college into an uproar, with cries of protest from the student NAACP group and others, who called the items symbols of white supremacy, slavery, and hate.

"I shouldn't have to walk past a Confederate flag on the way to my Black American Sociological Perspectives class, where we literally watch videos and learn about how that flag represents hatred and the lynching of people that look like me," said Bryn Mawr senior Allegra Tomassa Massaro, president of the NAACP, Tri-College Chapter. "That should not be part of my college experience."

The Bryn Mawr administration, through student leaders, asked the students to remove the items from the hall Sept. 12, the day they learned of it. But the controversy continued after the students then hung the flag in their room at Radnor dorm, visible from their window that looks out on the college center.

The college said the students removed the flag from campus several days later as pressure mounted, following a tense campus meeting.

"Our intention was never to cause the pain the community is currently suffering," Rachel Hager, a senior from Bellaire, Texas, and Vanessa Felso, a senior from Alpharetta, Ga., wrote to their hallmates Sept. 18.

"We apologize for hanging an object seen as a symbol of hate for many and for the subsequent divide and suffering of the Bryn Mawr community."

Hager and Felso, both on the college rowing team, did not respond to requests for comment.

[CatherineofAragon]

These chicks are too easily “roiled.” I know Midol helps me...perhaps they should try it.

[Moltke]

No doubt, though I’m sure she does know what “NAACP” stands for. Some rationalization would be quickly at hand.

[Nailbiter]

I have been thinking about your post since I read yesterday.

It is not the students as much as the liberals, they have come to believe that their first amendment right to be perpetually offended trumps my first amendment right to have an opinion.

If my opinion differs from their perpetually offended stance, I am immediately racist, or homophobic or gender biased.
I refuse to be labelled as anything other than having a differing opinion.

Diversity is great if you think about it, it should be celebrated- makes one think, test, open new ideas, see new vistas.

But if practiced in group think there is nothing new, no new experiences, no new ideas, no new vistas. How boring!

As to being offended, every day I am offended by close minded people.
I am offended by lazy co-workers, I am offended by graffiti passed off as great art, I am offended by the _resident in the White House.
I offended by whatever ..ism is the latest version of societal control.

But what I do everyday is pick my battles, I am but a small cog in great big wheel of life.

I cannot change the world just my little insignificant corner of my insignificant corner of this world.

A word here, a word there, an idea here and idea there getting people to see think, to test,to see.

I must chuckle “I really don’t understand these students today” the lament through the ages. I do not understand their music, dance,politics- what all parents have said through the ages.

I am not busting your chops just chuckling at your choice of words.