UMF Flag Project Stirs Controversy
Thursday, April 17th, 2008On Tuesday a new social art experiment opened at University of Maine at Farmington and has exploded into controversy. You can read one report at the Sun Journal website, another at The Morning Sentinel and a video at YouTube.
The basics of the story is that Susan Crane of Auburn had an assignment to either create a piece of guerrilla art or a social experiment and study the response. She choose to make up some American flags as art and layed them out on the floor of the Olsen Student Center in a zig-zag pattern to force people to either walk across them, step over them or go around them.
The exhibit got the dander up of one veteran, Charles Bennett of Farmington. He saw it as desecration and began to pick up the flags. Security informed him that he would be arrested if he continued. Administration was brought in to discuss this with Mr. Bennett. Farmington firefighters came by at some point with a complaint that the exhibit hindered egress from the building. And the story has now hit national news and will probably continue today!
Please read the articles I linked to above and others for the full story. If you find other good coverage then please share a link in the comments.
My first thought on this was shock! Why choose the American flag? Upon reading I discover that Ms. Crane considers herself a conservative and thought this was a good experiment more than just an art project. Interesting, I think! I’d like to hold off judgment until I see the results of the experiment. Of course I fear it will be tainted now with all the publicity. That some will make a point of walking around when they might not think about it before and other will walk over the flags and jump up and down on them when they might not have paused a moment previously.
The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States is a double edged sword. Ms. Crane has every right to conduct this experiment within the guidelines of University policy. Mr. Bennett has every right to peaceable protest. The visitors of the Olsen Student Center have every right to chose to walk around or walk on the art display. And I have every right to pray they walk around!
That any one person has a right to insult a symbol that represents the very privilege they exercise seems like an oxymoron to many. But it is the essence of our freedom.
If Ms. Crane is counting and calculating the percentage of people who walk over against those who walk around then I want to see those results. That is the real story! The results!
If it turns out that 75% of the visitors to the Student Center walk over the flag then it is very telling of the students and staff of UMF. But it is just as telling if we discover that 75% of the people chose to walk around the flags.
That’s what I want to know! Who walks around and who walks over. It’s a symbol I wave proudly but in the end it is just a symbol.
Flag desecration is perhaps one of the most emotionally charged issues we have in the United States today. But I am left to wonder what the result would have been if the art had been pictures of aborted fetuses instead? How would those results turn out?
Tags: Constitution, flag, Maine, UMF
