Patriotism became controversial after a group of seven sophomores and juniors hung a two-story American flag on the side of Old Quincy F entryway one week after Sept. 11. “We wanted to show our support,” recalls flag-hanger Aaron Y. Kim ’03. “A lot of people at the time were showing their patriotism—we thought it would be appropriate.”
But six months later, a not-so-nicely-worded e-mail made it apparent that at least one disgruntled Quincyite disagreed. “I live across from you and see [the flag] every day. Until now, I’ve not said anything about the display, given the terrible horror of September 11th—and what I take to be your sense of patriotism in wanting to display the flag,” wrote Richard J. Parker, adjunct lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government, to three of the flag-hangers. “But it’s now also nearly six months since that defining moment, and in that time apparently no one else has thought to tell you what is so deeply embarrassing to some of us as we look at what you’re doing.”
Parker went on to outline a detailed list of violations of flag-hanging protocol, including hanging the flag in the wrong direction, not taking it down at night and allowing it to touch the ground and become soiled. According to Parker’s e-mail, he had to stop and pick up the flag on numerous occasions when it had partially fallen on the ground.
“You do yourselves and your country a disservice by not addressing these matters,” Parker wrote. “I’m only sorry I’m apparently the first to raise them with you in the nearly six months since you put it up.” He closed his e-mail by letting the students know that he was a “sixties college graduate” and had “sharply dissented from the Vietnam War,” but also had a “senior year roommate who went on to become a Marine pilot in Vietnam” who was “shot down less than two years after we graduated—and is still MIA today.” Parker concluded, “I take this matter of the flag very seriously.”
The boys of Old Quincy F “didn’t want to piss anyone off,” according to Kim, and so they took the flag down after receiving the sternly worded e-mail. But a few days later, the flag went back up in its proper direction, illuminated at night with an outdoor floodlight. Although the flag had to come down a second time for spring break, Kim says they plan on putting it back up soon.
Parker is still not satisfied. “Frankly, I’m not aware what else they’ve done to show their support for the United States since September 11th,” he writes in an e-mail. “And now six months later, I find the hanging of a large flag off the side of a building by itself to signify less and less anything stirring about one’s patriotism.”
Parker and the Quincy F crew have not spoken since the initial e-mail. “We were going to address him, but then we thought, why offend anyone? Everyone is entitled to their opinions,” Kim says.
Parker suggests in an e-mail to FM that a third party may need to be brought in: “If their ‘solution’ is to put a spotlight in the yard so they can display their quite enormous flag, there may be safety issues involved in stringing a live extension cord across a student walkway, especially in inclement weather, but this is not my domain.”
—M.L. Siegel
