Slipping on my devil’s advocate robes here - what about people who remove displays of tiny white crosses because they are offended?
At a university, people should be able to tolerate viewpoints that offend them, within reasonable limits, and I do think this “installation” falls within those limits.
Since the display looked so very unofficial and without imprimatur, I am guessing that some passerby misconstrued who was being offended, and tidied up.
>> what about people who remove displays of tiny white crosses because they are offended?
I see your point, but usually if not always, the folks creating the white-cross displays do so with permission, and in a place set aside for such displays.
As far as I know, there are exactly ZERO white cross displays that were installed in such a way as to deface a public place. If you know otherwise, please enlighten me.
Therefore, I don’t agree with the moral equivalence you’re trying to sell.
Removing it would also, therefore, be flash freelance expression in a public space, would it not?
I'm a little iffy about this, to be sure.
I remember once (30 years ago), some students had erected (correc verb) a huge 6-foot snow penis in their fraternity front yars, right in the Brookline/CUA of DC neighborhood where there are also seminaries and the Dominican House of Studies. One night I took 2 kettles of boiling water and melted it down.
I suppose I could have named the newly shape-shifted art work, "Detumescence."
:o)