Three Yale University students have fanned the flames of a perennial question in American politics - whether burning the American flag should be a crime. The students were arrested April 2 for allegedly setting fire to an American flag at a private home near the New Haven, Conn., campus. The students claim the act was an apolitical "prank."
Court records indicate that the students are charged with second-degree arson, first-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree criminal mischief and second-degree breach of peace. The students were not charged with flag burning, which is not a crime in Connecticut, but rather for the potential damage to persons and property they could have caused.
The students' attorney, William Dow, told the Yale Daily News Friday that all three students - senior Hyder Akbar and freshmen Nikolaos Angelopoulos and Farhad Anklesaria - were released on bail last Wednesday morning.
Because Akbar, Angelopoulos and Anklesaria are Pakistani, Greek and British citizens, respectively, the incident has sparked speculation that the arson was political in its intent. Though Akbar was born in Pakistan and his father is a former governor of an Afghan province, he is also an American citizen. According to the Yale Daily News, Akbar worked as a translator for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Refuting public outcry over what many perceive as a political act, Dow told the Yale Daily News that "there was no political motivation whatsoever. It was a stupid college prank." Furthermore, he said Akbar claims sole responsibility for the "prank" and that Angelopoulos and Anklesaria were not involved.
Akbar has less to lose from the allegations, as Angelopoulos and Anklesaria are not American citizens and could be deported as a result of the charges.
Whether or not the flag burning was intentional, it sparked a media firestorm in which commentators said the students' nationalities suggest the incident was designed to be unpatriotic. "You burn lots of things for pranks, but you don't burn the American flag. He clearly knew what he was doing. There's no indication and no proof that he was drunk at the time ... and if he was drunk, maybe he was exhibiting his true feelings," John Fund, a Wall Street Journal reporter, said Friday on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes."
"It seems when people go to Yale, they come out thinking America is worse. They come out thinking that America is somehow sinister. I don't know what's going on at Yale, except that these Ivy League colleges, I think, are completely removed from reality," Fund said. "They're in their own ivory tower, so to speak, and I think parents who send their kids there sometimes send them at their peril in terms of the values they're going to learn."
Yale officials declined to comment on whether there would be any internal disciplinary action against the students.
"It makes me sick to my stomach to think that someone would burn the American flag," Marc Suraci, the owner of the house where the flag was burned, told Reuters April 4. "But it gets to another level when it is somebody else's flag on their own personal property."
New Haven Police Department spokeswoman Bonnie Posick told the Yale Daily News Thursday that the students told the arresting officers that lighting the flag on fire "was a stupid thing to do."
Some, such as Sam Duboff, a Yale freshman, said students speculated the three men's intoxication precipitated the incident. Dow declined to comment as to whether the students were intoxicated at the time of the incident.
Duboff, who is in a class with one of the arrested students, said though Yale students are discussing the flag burning on campus, they "aren't taking it as seriously as the media are portraying it. ... People are thinking of it more as a big mistake."
Duboff said the alleged crime is not the flag burning itself, but the destruction of private property. "The issue here is that it was on private property, which is a separate issue from flag burning," he said. "I think that it's still unclear as to whether it was an intentional act of flag burning. I think that the real issue here is that they went onto a property to burn something, whether it was a flag or not."
William Palmer, a Yale junior, told The Herald that students generally don't consider the act political in nature. "I understand why people would think of it as having political implications, but it was really just a bad accident," he said. "The whole point of the story is that it could have been a blanket hanging from the pole," and that media sources who are portraying it as such are just "egging on the issue."
"I don't have any particularly strong feelings about burning flags. I don't think it should be made illegal," Palmer said.
"It (was) really just a bad accident that happened. ... It was political by accident," he added.
Posick, the police department spokeswoman, said officers first encountered the three students at 3 a.m. on Tuesday morning. The students had flagged down a patrol car, saying they were lost and needed directions back to campus. When the police officers later returned to see if the students found their way back, they discovered that a flag hanging from the front of a house was on fire, Posick said.
Though the alleged arsonists in this case may not have had political intent, the nationwide press has again raised the controversial issue of whether burning the American flag should be made unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that restrictions on expressing extremely unpopular opinions - even those hostile toward the government - are protected by the First Amendment, said Peter Stone, assistant professor of political science at Stanford University. In several cases, such as Texas v. Johnson, the Supreme Court overturned both state and federal laws outlawing flag burning, Stone said.
"The First Amendment says that you must protect even unpopular ideas," Stone said. "If you have regulations for demonstrations, those regulations must apply to all demonstrations. ... There cannot be restrictions on the content" unless it endangers people or property, Stone added.
As the issue is being debated on the nation's airwaves, it is also a topic of discussion on College Hill. "I think it's disrespectful, and that there are better ways to protest against the country," Julie Siwicki '10 said. "But I think that freedom of expression is more important than outlawing flag burning."
"I think it's right if you are a citizen, but it's definitely not allowable if you're not, because burning a flag is such a powerful symbol of hatred, of disagreement," said Gabriel Heidrich '10. "If you were burning a gay rights flag, it would be the same thing. ... The flag represents a specific group of people and a specific ideology."
Edward Tang '09, a Canadian citizen born in Hong Kong, offered another view. "I understand the act being considered a crime in terms of it being arson, but I don't understand why it should be a crime because it's a flag," Tang said.
