The spokesperson of a student political organization accused administrators at a Wisconsin college of banning posters commemorating the victims of “September 11 or other victims of radical Islamist terrorism,” because they believed the flyers would harbor an “environment” hostile to Muslim students.
Young America’s Foundation spokesperson Spencer Brown wrote in an August 29 blog post that officials at Ripon College cited bias reports filed during last year’s “9/11: Never Forget Project” to bar Young Americans for Freedom from hanging its posters this year.
The blog post includes a collage of images from September 11, the Pulse Nightclub shooting, the Iran hostage crisis, and ISIS’ beheading of an American hostage, to name a few. Brown wrote that one school administrator noted that some of the images on the poster, such as ISIS, didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. Another quipped that the Iran hostage crisis wasn’t an example of Islamic terrorism, he said.
“Students of history will recall that the Iran hostage crisis was ‘America’s first searing experience with Islamist terrorism,’ and that ISIS rose out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and al-Qaeda carried out the deadly attacks of 9/11, as well as other attacks highlighted on the poster,” Brown opined.
Brown claimed the D.C.-based organization pressed the “Bias Protocol Board” about its decision, and, in his opinion, was given nothing more than “leftist” talking points that appealed to emotion as opposed to logic.
According to Brown, the Board determined, “There is nothing that this poster, in particular, adds to the conversation about 9/11, or about the politics of terrorism, or about national security or responses to it that couldn’t be done easily and more constructively without it.”
In an email to CrimeOnline, Melissa Anderson, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Ripon College, called Brown’s account “false and propagated.” She also noted that Brown’s story was devoid the school’s side of the story.
Anderson wrote in Thursday’s email:
Ripon College encourages an environment for free speech and civil dialogue on our campus. The YAF posters are not, and have never been, banned. After receiving complaints from our students about the YAF Islamic extremism posters last year, college officials gave the Ripon College YAF student representatives suggestions as to how to have a discussion about 9/11 this year with our entire campus and community. The annual 9/11 flag memorial is a great example of how YAF students engage the entire community.
[Featured image: Wikicommons]
