Middlebury College students marked the 12th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks yesterday with a display of 2,977 miniature American flags in front of Mead Chapel. The memorial, organized by the school’s College Republicans and College Democrats groups, has happened every 9/11 for nearly 10 years, according to the Middlebury Campus.
This year, though, things went awry.
The Campus reported that five people ripped the flags out of the ground and tossed them into trash bags because they were planted on sacred Abenaki ground.
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
Wowser,
Not only is her statement worth a read but the comment section is even better.
If the comments are even partially true this woman is a whackjob with a capital W
Nothing but fun and games over at Vermont’s premier LIBERAL arts college.
Oh.
My.
God.
Good on the protesters. Besides that the emptiness of waving a flag is so tiring. Phony grace, as others have called it.
What a joke. Shireman-Grabowski sounds like a real patriot and deep thinker.
I understand both sides. Although not witnessing the mass murders by Europeans of native americans…but only remembering 9/11.
I myself, do have native American blood…so I do understand the protest. To know “you were here first”, and then to called illegal, or wetback, or just different because of obvious skin color differences…it hurts…but I’m also half white too. So I see both sides.
I guess, remember and respect all “americans”.
And think about if some US citizens of real native origin had decided to plant some totem poles in your grandmothers cemetery…and also remember it’s not their grandmothers…but great, great, great, great, great, great grandmothers cemetary that those flags are poking into.
Just think about that.
And remember 9/11 as well.
And future terrorist.
If she doesn’t end up in a mental institution first.
I’m sure there must be more than one hill in Middlebury available to plant those flags, no need to do it on an ancient Abenaki burial ground.
How do you define “deep thinker” and what is your evidence? If you have the same information as I, as her hypothetical teacher I would give her essay on the Middlebury blog maybe a B-. It is poorly organized and arguably incoherent. Judging by her writing and her actions she is troubled, overly emotional, attention seeking, and arguably unstable. That does not make her a “deep thinker. “
The same college that heckled and harassed Frederick Douglas when he came to VT to speak.
I am not familiar with the layout of Middlebury College. But if the flags were planted in front of Mead Chapel then isn’t Mead Chapel itself planted on a large footprint (foundation) on or in proximity to the supposed sacred burial ground? By their reasoning, shouldn’t the protesters be consistent and pry Mead Chapel up as well? Oh wait, but Mead Chapel belongs to a LIBERAL college. Yeah, we can ignore that. But the flag planters themselves were not acting like good liberals. Easier to pick on powerless fellow students who were only trying to remember the 9/11 victims and who might partly be conservative (gasp!) or patriotic. If the college had no stated policy about not walking or building on that area, then the flags planted there temporarily were fine. As far as phony grace and being tired of flag waving, the students weren’t waving the flags for party and parade and to whoop it up. The flags were inserted into the ground temporarily as a memorial to the dead. Ancient Native American dead and modern-era American dead are all equal in death. There are no distinctions of race or class or politics among the dead. The protesters showed great disrespect for the other students sincere intentions while demanding respect for their own cause themselves. The comment about erecting totem poles in the grandmother’s cemetery is not the same thing. One place is designated as a cemetery. Is the area the protesters objected to designated as a cemetery, clearly and with signage so people would know better? If the students had been planting flags there for ten years, then clearly they had an expectation from the college itself that it was okay to do so. These protesters sound like a bunch of very confused folks who can’t even give the same reasons for what they did — steal the miniature flags bought by others. If they objected to the flags being planted on Native American burial grounds, then why did they say they were stealing the flags to protest American imperialism?? Sounds like OWS to me. Half of them didn’t even know why they were protesting. And only one of these folks was actually a student at Middlebury. But hey, what do I know?
There is no evidence anyone was ever buried there. People are making shit up, or naively believing something they heard from someone who heard something.