Recently I was subjected to disciplinary action due to my decision to fly the American flag on my college campus on Sept. 11.

Most of us are aware of the campus policy against flags, which stems from the practice of austerity and avoidance of symbols in Quaker meetinghouses. This is all well and good, but Guilford College is not a Quaker meetinghouse. It is an educational institution, one that receives federal money at that.

This brings me to this past Thursday.

Aware of the campus policy, I decided to hang an American flag off the balcony of the student center. I am the president of our College Republicans chapter and I felt it would be an effective way to remind people of the day and perhaps give them a moment of pause or reflection.

The flag was confiscated, and I went and retrieved it. After I regained possession of Old Glory, another student and I went back and put the flag back up, not leaving it this time. After a short while, a sympathetic Public Safety officer arrived and told me that I could either take the flag down or he would have to follow his orders to confiscate it and document me. I let him document me.

In addition, Guilford College in no way recognizes the day or had any sort of service or memorial. In fact, a student-run candlelight vigil was soiled when a professor, in an inconceivable display, delivered a harebrained, drunken diatribe about the “blood on American hands” in the years after 9/11. This is certainly a viewpoint one may hold, but it seems reasonable to expect a member of our school’s faculty to demonstrate even an infantile amount of maturity and recognize that there is a time and place for everything.

In summary, I will now be subject to possible disciplinary action for having the audacity to fly our nation’s flag while on American soil on one of the most important days of the national calendar. In addition, this policy seems to magically disappear whenever the international club holds an event. This leads me to believe that the rule has less to do with traditional Quaker values (which don’t apply in this situation) and more to do with a rising sentiment that patriotism is something to be ashamed of, lest a vocal minority decides to take offense.