No UC Irvine Did NOT Just Ban The American Flag

By lwilliams

Guest writer, Andrew Mehta, UC Irvine student

All you have to do is Google “UCI flag” and you’ll find a plethora of articles that are misleading about the recent legislation at my school. I’m a student at UCI, and I just want to give a little more clarification. First, here are a few quick, important points:

• The school itself did not at any point ban the American flag
• Only six students voted for this ban
• The president of ASUCI, the group responsible, has since vetoed this ban

ASUCI (Associated Students – University of California, Irvine) wanted to make its lobby more culturally inclusive by banning all flags, of all countries, being hung in their main office. Twelve students voted on the issue: 6 yeas, 4 nays, and 2 abstentions. So one group of students chose to ban flags from one room in one office on campus. These are the facts. However, many mainstream media outlets are dramatizing this with misleading titles such as “Students at UC Irvine vote to ban American flag.” This insinuates that we all voted to ban the flag from our entire campus. As a student, this irritates me because now my school has a reputation for being unpatriotic. Most of these articles do clarify that it was just one office that chose not to display the flag, but most people just see the headline and that forever changes their opinion of UCI. The president of ASUCI has officially vetoed it, and in the executive cabinet’s statement it reaffirms that the group “fundamentally disagrees with the actions taken by ASUCI Legislative Council.” Personally, I do not believe that the six who voted in favor for this are unpatriotic, as they’ve been labeled to be. While they had good intentions, I believe they are part of a growing problem in our society. Many people worry too much about offending others and their cultures, so they try to refrain from affiliation with any culture. But this results in a lack of culture, which is the opposite of what America is supposed to be. America is the culmination of many cultures coexisting all under one nation, and what better way to show that than our American Flag?  What’s your opinion of the UCI ban on the American Flag? Chime in with us on social media or in the comment section below.