Posted on 10/01/2001 4:06:24 PM PDT by Lecie
Flag display causes ruckus at Holy Cross
Monday, October 01, 2001
By Emilie Astell
Worcester (Mass) Telegram & Gazette Staff
WORCESTER-- Margaret Post took an American flag to work three days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to mourn the death of Todd Beamer, a close personal friend who was a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93 when the hijacked jet crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
She did not realize, she said Thursday, that by hanging the flag in a second-floor hallway of Beavens Hall at the College of the Holy Cross she would cause a commotion. Instead of allowing the flag to remain in place, Royce Singleton, chairman of the college's Sociology Department, asked Mrs. Post, a secretary in the department, to take it down.
She refused.
He took it down, folded it and placed the flag on her desk, she said.
“I was doing a very patriotic thing on a national day of mourning,” she said. Her only intention, she added, was to mourn the death of a friend and honor his memory.
Mrs. Post's husband, Robert, worked with Mr. Beamer at Oracle Corp. Mrs. Post and Lisa Beamer had accompanied their husbands on a business trip to Europe and returned home on Sept. 10.
Todd Beamer is believed to have been one of the passengers who tried to stop the hijackers. He called his wife on a cellphone minutes before the plane crashed, telling her that he and others planned to overpower the terrorists.
Mrs. Beamer was honored Sept. 20 at the Capitol during President Bush's address to the nation and received a standing ovation when she was introduced by the president.
Mr. Singleton acknowledged in an interview Thursday afternoon that he had taken the flag down, but declined to explain his reasons, saying that there was “nothing to discuss with anyone outside the college.”
“I don't want to get into why it happened,” he said. “It was a decision I very much regret having made for many reasons.”
Mrs. Post said she explained to Mr. Singleton that she was mourning a friend, but he told her that displaying the flag would make some students uncomfortable. After the incident, she received a letter from Mr. Singleton in which he expressed remorse, she said.
Mr. Singleton denied Thursday night that he said anything about students to Mrs. Post.
“There is nothing that I can say that will make anybody understand the social context in which this occurred,” he said.
There was still lingering shock, anxiety and anger that Friday, he said. Seeing the flag in the hallway upset him, he added, and “stirred certain emotions in me.” He did not elaborate on what kinds of emotions he experienced.
Two other professors in the department, whom Mrs. Post declined to identify, agreed with Mr. Singleton that the flag should be removed, she said.
The incident upset Mrs. Post and prompted her to leave the campus before lunchtime that Friday, Sept. 14. She returned to work the following Wednesday.
“I started the day in honor and left in embarrassment and tears,” the Auburn resident said. “I'm a very patriotic person. I fly an American flag outside my home every day with a light on it.”
When she returned to work, Mrs. Post met with Mr. Singleton and Stephen C. Ainlay, dean of the college. An agreement was reached allowing Mrs. Post to display a flag in her office. She now has a small flag on top of her desk.
Holy Cross spokeswoman Katherine B. McNamara called the incident a “knee-jerk reaction” on the part of Mr. Singleton and one that does not characterize the college.
“The campus is filled with American flags,” she said Thursday night. “Holy Cross stands for academic freedom.”
As news of the incident spread through Beavens Hall, Mrs. Post said, an employee in the psychology department, which is on the third floor of the building, retrieved the flag that had been taken down. The flag was then displayed in the third-floor hallway, with no objections.
An employee at Holy Cross for eight years, Mrs. Post said she still enjoys working there, although it has been stressful since the incident.
“I know the professors in the department had a different interpretation of the flag than I have,” she said, “but it's not every day a secretary stands up to professors.”
Hmmm...sounds like a philosophy that needs to be applied to celebrities -- actors and musicians (some are so severely misanthropic) -- "acting" like they are knowledgeable about public affairs or international relations.
The excuse about the students being uncomfortable was a lie ... HE was uncomfortable, angry and upset.
And "three other" professors were too.
Read his quotes again ... pure drivel, anger, and hatred are dripping from this professor, towards the US.
Wow! Excellent article.
I am faxing to Pakistani friends. Thanks.
BUMP.
Yes, there are at least two of us here. I'm trying to get to the bottom of the story and find out what, if anything, the school plans to do. I've made inquiries through a couple of my friends who still have good contacts on campus and I have sent a message to a professor whom I respect. I expect that the school's alumni will be provided with a more extensive briefing on this via e-mail or snail mail. I'll share if I hear anything interesting. For what its worth, I suspect that this incident is going to upset quite a few of the alumni.
For those of you who don't know the school, Holy Cross is a small Jesuit college (approximately 2,500 students) located in the working class city of Worcester, Massachusetts. Most of its students come from middle class and upper middle class Irish and Italian Catholic families. When I graduated fifteen years ago, 80 percent of the students were from Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York or New Jersey. Politically, most alumni lay someplace between moderate Democrat and moderate Republican and believe in the American Dream. We tend to marry (often someone from HC), have kids and raise 'em Catholic. Often we end up in the professions as doctors, lawyers and accountants. Many of my classmates participated in AFROTC, NROTC and ROTC and remain on active duty today. Our alumni include Clarence Thomas, Joseph Califano, Bob Cousey and Chris Matthews. One of our Jesuits, Father Joseph T. O'Callahan, was the first chaplain to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions aboard USS Franklin. He is buried in the Jesuit Cemetary at the school. The student body today is pretty similar demographically to the description which appears above.
We are a small school and the alumni tend to remain close. At least six graduates died on September 11 and most of us either knew or have friends who knew the victims. I think that Professor Singleton's actions will upset the alumni and the school is going to have to do provide us with an explanation of his actions (and those of his colleagues) and the college's response to them. I expect there will be a serious, thinking and satisfactory response to Singleton by the school, although I doubt it will be the firing squad that many here would like. I think the alumni will demand some action and given the school's exceedingly high alumni participation rates in fund raising (51% of all alumni made donations this year to the school) something will happen.
Foreigners come voluntarily to this country to get an education at our schools, yet they are offended when the flag of that country is openly displayed?
As I do three nights a week, I walked past the wreckage of the WTC, as close as civilians are permitted. It is still, apparently, smouldering. The fumes are pervasive throughout downtown, even inside intact buildings. And people are still standing by the site and weeping.
Frankly, this offends me. The fact that several thousand innocent people were murdered by Moslems in New York last month offends me. The presence of arrogant infidel dogs (not including Herr Professor) at Catholic colleges offends me. The whole damnable heathen cult of the desert moon god offends me.
I believe these sentiments are shared by many armed and angry people across the U.S. But there are no Arabs dangling from lamp posts precisely because of the rule of law in this country which is represented by the very flag which these homicidal pagans so despise.
Please, oh, please, take away that flag, but also take away the Constitutional protections guaranteed under it. Just for a little while. Then we will see how many surviving Moslems are still offended.
"If the Foo sh*ts wear it...." comes to mind. Why?
My heart is not in sparring with you tonight--I just wanted to draw attention to my observation that on this thread, we have indicted sociology (...Ok, well-deserved), psychology, economics, liberal arts colleges, professors, Ph.D's and more.
All because of this one jerk do we indict...every one...any one...all academe?!
What I've noticed is that because most liberals expect conservatives to be mean when we are polite they become first confused and think we are agreeing with them but then mad as hell when they realize we are not.
Now I'm really mad at Prof. Singleton.
Glad you're not up for sparring tonight. You smart people on FR take such advantage of stupid folks like me. I just don't know if I could take another verbal beating.....
The virus runs deep, believe me.
I believe you.
tenured.
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