Just like our days protesting apartheid
When it took down the American flag in the wake of Donald Trump’s election last month, Hampshire College was swarmed by angry veterans and became a punching bag in the conservative media.
One group that doesn’t appear to be criticizing the college: its publicly identified donors.
The College Fix reached two alumni featured on the Massachusetts liberal arts school’s “Meet Our Donors” page, which has consisted of largely the same group of graduates for at least two years.
Both said they backed President Jonathan Lash’s decision to keep the flag down for two weeks, in his words, “to facilitate much-needed dialogue on our campus about how to dismantle the bigotry that is prevalent in our society,” judging by Trump’s election.
The flag went back up Dec. 2, with Lash telling The Boston Globe he had been deluged with “unpleasant” emails and “people calling to express their anger.”
Not about the election
“I think [the flag’s removal] gave everyone a chance to have a discourse on it,” Liz D’Aloia, now a lawyer in Texas, told The Fix in a phone interview.
She said that political overtones should not be read into the flag’s removal, which followed the anonymous burning of an earlier flag that students had lowered to half-staff the day after the election.
MORE: University bans American flag to combat ‘hate-based violence’
“The whole thing is, it was not supposed to be about the election or about us as Americans,” D’Aloia said. “It was supposed to be a conversation about what the flag represents.”
D’Aloia was a student at Hampshire when her peers were protesting apartheid, which led the college to divest from South Africa. She said the flag controversy reminds her of those days three decades ago.
“Hampshire College is the place that is very socially justice-aware. There’s no doubt about it,” she said.
D’Aloia wrote on the Hampshire donor page that she and her husband included the college, “a very special place,” in their estate planning because it taught her to “learn how to think, be creative, and innovate.”
“I respect our [First Amendment] right to freedom of speech,” she said, referring to Hampshire’s decision to remove the flag. “We may not always like how those rights are expressed by people, but they are our rights as Americans.”
‘A campus conversation was needed’
Another alum supported the flag’s removal and was not surprised by it.
“Hampshire teaches students to ask questions, a fundamental I have carried with me in the 19 years since I graduated,” the alum told The Fix via LinkedIn, asking not to be identified.
“The administration recognized that the student body had strong feelings about what the flag represented, especially in light of Donald Trump’s populist election, and felt that a campus conversation was needed,” the graduate said.
“I am positive the conversations will continue, especially as the students and country figure out what to do with a president with a dangerous nationalist agenda.”
MORE: Hundreds of vets protest college that removed flag
Carol Woolfe, also featured on the donor page, told The Fix she did not “know enough of the specifics of what happened” to say how she reacted to the flag removal.
She is the newest alum donor on the page, having been added sometime after September 2014. Woolfe’s entry says Hampshire prepared her to “manage the ups and downs of my work life,” and that she is funding scholarships for students “who might otherwise miss out on this life-shaping experience.”
Another alum donor, Peter Sikowitz, did not respond to a Fix query via LinkedIn.
Asked how its board of trustees reacted to the flag removal, the administration referred The Fix to its official background of how and why the flag decision was made. It did not respond to a followup voicemail asking how Hampshire chooses alumni to feature on the donor page.
Yesterday Hampshire raised the US flag to full staff. Statement by President Jonathan Lash https://t.co/BaEbmv4TNg pic.twitter.com/KRyC5JL3u6
— Hampshire College (@hampshirecolg) December 3, 2016
After the flag was removed, the college sought to isolate itself from the public. Lash warned veterans that they could be arrested if they came back to protest, said the school was monitoring social media to preempt other protests, and ordered students not to speak to the media.
A month-old White House petition to revoke federal funding from Hampshire, in response to its flag removal, was closed this weekend because it didn’t reach the necessary 100,000 signatures in 30 days. It drew fewer than 6,000 signatures.
MORE: College will call the cops on veterans who protest flag removal
MORE: Hampshire president: Taking down flag is ‘what free speech looks like’
MORE: ‘To my knowledge, no one has ever burned a flag at a trade school’
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