The University of Chicago announced that it would no longer be flying the LGBTQ+ Pride flag for Pride Month at the UC Laboratory Schools after three years.
Activists expressed their outrage over the decision in favor of institutional neutrality. The LGBTQ+ flag had been raised at the flagpole in Blaine Courtyard for Pride Month every year since 2022.
‘You see the display of even basic symbols expressing the dignity of our students would be an unacceptable political stance and violation of neutrality.’
Interim Director Ethan Bueno de Mesquita announced the decision in an email Monday that made clear it only applied to the flagpole.
“To be clear, the full membership of LGBTQ+ people in the Lab community is not a contested issue. It is a core value,” he wrote.
The UC Laboratory High School is a program for gifted high schoolers to experience the University of Chicago.
Bueno de Mesquita said the flag would violate the school’s new policy on viewpoint-neutral teaching.
“I think the university saying that an observer who sees something flying from a flagpole and understands that to be a statement of the institution is a reasonable interpretation of how flagpoles operate, and so that doesn’t strike me as an unreasonable rule,” he said to U-High Midway, the student newspaper for the UC Lab.
The decision drew sharp criticism from the university’s American Association of University Professors.
“You see the display of even basic symbols expressing the dignity of our students would be an unacceptable political stance and violation of neutrality,” the chapter account wrote in a sarcastic tone.
“The KKK is alive and well at UChicago,” another response reads.
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However, the College Fix news site noted that a student life office run by the school’s Center for Identity + Inclusion continued to offer support for “LGBTQ students, questioning students, and allies in the college and graduate and professional schools.”
New laws and regulations against the LGBTQ+ agenda have reportedly led to an exodus of gender-confused people fleeing to Seattle, Washington, to seek gender refuge. Activists have called on the mayor to declare a civil emergency to provide support for community aid organizations.
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