Just a side note from our graduation weekend.
I knew that there was a small group protesting at Notre Dame in favor of the HAMAS terrorist activity and genocide against Jews, but the school never allowed an "encampment" to be built. That protest apparently ended about a week before graduation.
So the big commencement ceremony occurred on Sunday morning. Roughly 1800 students were graduating across all the disciplines. It is common to see "caps" decorated on the student's heads, and in the College of Engineering I saw 1 or 2 Palestinian flag decorated caps, in the College of Business/Economics I saw 1 or 2 of the same. But over in the College of Arts & Letters I saw 3 or 4, and perhaps 8 to 10 tiny Palestine flags, these flags were roughly the size of a 6" by 4" notecard. School of Architecture had ZERO flags for Palestine. Perhaps there was 1 or 2, but I don't recall seeing any in the School of Biology/Chemistry (not sure what they actually call that school). But each "school" sat in separated areas, so you could see their groups, each school wore a different tassel, etc. So of the roughly 1800 students there were perhaps a bit over a dozen that respectfully wore/held the flag of Palestine.
At NO TIME did anyone yell out any pro-HAMAS rhetoric.
During the speech by Fr Jenkins, was the ONLY time the tiny Palestine flags were held up, and they were NOT raised high over head, they were simply held at roughly shoulder height, they were held still and were NOT waved around. Basically they did NOT disrupt anything. All all of them were in the liberal arts area of graduates, none in the hard sciences or engineering, etc areas. It was good to see that there was no protest. Fr Jenkin's speech highlighted civil discourse and opening your ears to both sides of a discussion, respecting the opinions of others, not hating others and feeling morally superior, etc; he really nailed it, you could tell this was not a man who was not fostering the ideals of "shouting down" the opinions of others or allowing violent/threatening speech that seem to exist at Columbia, Northwestern, Yale, Harvard, UCLA, etc.
The one take away that I have from all this is that, probably 85% of the pro-HAMAS terror supporters were young women.
Most of these pro-HAMAS flag bearers/hat wearers were young women of color. Some appeared to be middle eastern, some black and or hispanic, and some whites.
I know there are many students at ND from various countries all around the world, and I've met some who came from various middle east nations so I presume there are Palestinians on campus. But it seems like all there on campus, at least for commencement weekend, were civil and tolerant of the opinions of both Jews and Palestinians and that was a nice thing to see.
I knew that there was a small group protesting at Notre Dame in favor of the HAMAS terrorist activity and genocide against Jews, but the school never allowed an "encampment" to be built. That protest apparently ended about a week before graduation.
So the big commencement ceremony occurred on Sunday morning. Roughly 1800 students were graduating across all the disciplines. It is common to see "caps" decorated on the student's heads, and in the College of Engineering I saw 1 or 2 Palestinian flag decorated caps, in the College of Business/Economics I saw 1 or 2 of the same. But over in the College of Arts & Letters I saw 3 or 4, and perhaps 8 to 10 tiny Palestine flags, these flags were roughly the size of a 6" by 4" notecard. School of Architecture had ZERO flags for Palestine. Perhaps there was 1 or 2, but I don't recall seeing any in the School of Biology/Chemistry (not sure what they actually call that school). But each "school" sat in separated areas, so you could see their groups, each school wore a different tassel, etc. So of the roughly 1800 students there were perhaps a bit over a dozen that respectfully wore/held the flag of Palestine.
At NO TIME did anyone yell out any pro-HAMAS rhetoric.
During the speech by Fr Jenkins, was the ONLY time the tiny Palestine flags were held up, and they were NOT raised high over head, they were simply held at roughly shoulder height, they were held still and were NOT waved around. Basically they did NOT disrupt anything. All all of them were in the liberal arts area of graduates, none in the hard sciences or engineering, etc areas. It was good to see that there was no protest. Fr Jenkin's speech highlighted civil discourse and opening your ears to both sides of a discussion, respecting the opinions of others, not hating others and feeling morally superior, etc; he really nailed it, you could tell this was not a man who was not fostering the ideals of "shouting down" the opinions of others or allowing violent/threatening speech that seem to exist at Columbia, Northwestern, Yale, Harvard, UCLA, etc.
The one take away that I have from all this is that, probably 85% of the pro-HAMAS terror supporters were young women.
Most of these pro-HAMAS flag bearers/hat wearers were young women of color. Some appeared to be middle eastern, some black and or hispanic, and some whites.
I know there are many students at ND from various countries all around the world, and I've met some who came from various middle east nations so I presume there are Palestinians on campus. But it seems like all there on campus, at least for commencement weekend, were civil and tolerant of the opinions of both Jews and Palestinians and that was a nice thing to see.
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