Catholic University of America staff took down a memorial display that students set up to honor victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
According to a spokesperson for the Washington, D.C.-based university, the administration “mistakenly approved” the display set up by the CUA chapter of Students Supporting Israel. Members of SSI placed several hundred small Israeli flags on a campus lawn on Oct. 6 in memory of the more than 1,200 people killed by Hamas two years prior.
The following day, Felipe Avila, a senior at CUA and the founder of the school’s chapter of SSI, said he received an email from the university rescinding its approval for the display and informing him that the flags had been removed.
Administrators returned the Israeli flags to SSI “stuffed in a clear trash bag,” according to Avila.
“It was devastating,” Avila wrote in a statement emailed to Washington Jewish Week. “We created a peaceful memorial to mourn innocent lives lost to terrorism, and the university treated it like trash. Seeing those Israeli flags stuffed into a plastic bag sent a clear message: our grief doesn’t matter here.”
The university says the only flags allowed to be displayed in publicly-accessible campus spaces are the flags of the United States, the District of Columbia, the Holy See and any official CUA flag. Exceptions can be made for university-sponsored events.
In early August, the administration informed SSI that a planned display of Israeli flags on Pryz Lawn in front of the student center violated the university’s policy, as the lawn is accessible to the public, Karna Lozoya, the university spokesperson, wrote in a statement emailed to Washington Jewish Week.
Staff of the university’s Center for Student Engagement offered to “discuss other ways to raise awareness and honor the lives lost in the [Oct. 7] attack,” Lozoya said.
Avila went ahead and submitted an event request to reserve the lawn for a “flag memorial.”
“The event was mistakenly approved,” Lozoya said. “The memorial was installed on Oct. 6, and removed on Oct. 7 when the university realized that the event had been approved in error.”
This removal stung for some students. Avila emphasized the importance of the memorial, with each flag symbolizing a life taken in the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.
“When the university tore them down, they weren’t just removing flags; they were erasing over 1,200 stories,” Avila said.
The national Students Supporting Israel organization called the flags’ removal a “serious moral lapse” in a statement to The Washington Times.
“The university regrets that the enforcement of the policy coincided with a deeply significant day of remembrance for those affected by the horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attack just two years ago,” Lozoya wrote. “The enforcement of the flag policy is not a reflection in any way of the university’s views on the terrorist attack on Israel.”
Lozoya referenced a statement that CUA President Peter Kilpatrick made after the attack, in which he stated, “Hamas is a terrorist organization and seeks the annihilation of the state of Israel. Its abhorrent acts of terrorism against Israel merit the strongest condemnation.”
Avila said he believes CUA enforces the flags policy inconsistently. He says he has photographed flags for Ukraine and other countries displayed around campus. The CUA chapter of SSI is considering legal action if the university “fails to enforce the flag policy fairly,” Avila told The Washington Times.
Lozoya said students are allowed to hang flags inside campus buildings because those spaces are not accessible to the public.
Avila challenges the university’s stance on the memorial.
“This ‘inside vs. outside’ claim is just another sloppy, tired excuse from an administration whose story keeps changing,” Avila wrote to Washington Jewish Week. “It’s a desperate distraction from the simple, chilling fact that they tore down a peaceful memorial for 1,200 victims of Hamas terror.”
