Alum claims Stanford University administrator told him to remove American flag outside fraternity house
A Stanford University alum is speaking out about a school administrator’s alleged push to have an American flag removed from outside his fraternity.
According to an article in the Opinion section of the Stanford Review, former student Pablo Lozano, who graduated in 2018, was an active member of the on-campus fraternity Sigma Chi when it was on probation during the fall of 2016. When recounting his effort to work with school administrators to ensure that the organization would fall back into favor with the university, Lozano recalled an incident in which an unnamed Residential Education liaison allegedly told him that the American flag flying at the front of the house should be taken down in order to “change [the fraternity’s] perception on campus.”
Referring to the administrator as “Mr. Z,” the article says that the individual “insinuated not only that the flag made others uncomfortable but that its being flown tainted Sigma Chi’s reputation and, presumably, worsened its chance of survival. Lozano understood Mr. Z to imply that the American flag, as a symbol, could be intimidating, aggressive or alienating.”
Lozano declined to comment. However, according to the article, residents of the Sigma Chi house decided not to take the flag down but instead to replace it with an even larger one as a “silent but visible protest,” in Lozano’s words.
Representatives from Stanford University told Yahoo Lifestyle that they “have not been able to verify such a conversation during the timeframe described in media reports.”
“Students are free to fly an American flag outside their residences if they so choose,” the spokesperson said, before clarifying that the flag was still there when Sigma Chi’s national organization announced the close of the Stanford chapter in May 2018 as a result of an unrelated incident with drugs. “We do know that in the summer of 2018, as the house transitioned from a fraternity residence to general student housing, our staff worked with former members of the fraternity to determine what the group wished to do with a flag at the house, as it was thought to be their property.”
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