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.
I'm grateful I attended a Vincentian Father's all men school, St. John's Prep, in Brooklyn NY (62-66).
We and they didn't suffer fools lightly.
Best FReegards.
Mrs. Margaret Post. This is an American we should all remember when we salute the flag!
You figure out what they are really thinking.
a) left-wing, America hating intellectual elitists like a lot of the professorail scum on today's college campuses;
or
b)the flag offended, or they thought would offend, some of the foreign, Islamic parasties this government so generously allows to study here .
When I saw this article in the T&G my first impulse was to call the guy and give him hell. After thinking about it for a minute, I said "Naw, this guy needs to be freeped!" I'm a long-time lurker here on FR but have never posted anything or replied to a post until now. I was all set to post this article, but see that I was beaten to the punch by another intrepid Mass. area Freeper.
Good work! In the broad scheme of things, I don't know how much good it does to call these traitorous elitists on the carpet, but it sure feels good to let them have it!
Holy Cross's home page has a link to Understanding Islam, War, and Terrorism--- A Message from MECCA (Muslim Endeavor to Create Cultural Awareness)
On behalf of the Muslim community at Holy Cross, MECCA (Muslim Endeavor to Create Cultural Awareness) would like to express its deepest horror and sorrow at the terrible events in New York and Washington D.C.
....[snip]...
It is incorrect to understand the word jihad as "holy war." The word for war in Arabic is harb, and jihad is not used in that context. In Arabic, jihad means "to struggle."
This is interesting to me because a Muslim cleric visiting a local school here said "Jihad" means "One's profession."
Who is right?
I prefer the term 'bovine scat'... :)
As we have seen time and time again, academic freedom has a leftist ring to it and does not apply to conservatives, generally.
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