UPDATE:
The original article has been corrected to reflect that Ripon College did not overtly reject YAF’s application, but that they did not grant an application; Ripon claims that no application is necessary in the first place.
Ripon College told The Daily Wire that the students are not prohibited from hanging the posters and that the students were not reported, but that “members of the campus community sent notes to the bias group about the posters.” Ripon College also says they are “well aware” that the YAF chapter will hang their posters and that “there is no policy that requires pre-approval to hang posters,” adding “The YAF students are also Ripon College Students and as such are free to submit complaints to the bias group.”
YAF posted a new article titled, “Ripon College’s Ban By Any Other Name,” alleging that “Ripon College claims that because they never used the word ‘ban’ in reference to the posters memorializing innocent victims of radical Islamist terrorism, they don’t deserve the criticism that’s been leveled at them.” YAF added, “It seems self-evident but in our view, as well as the view of the larger press, a refusal to grant approval is the equivalent of a ban.”
ORIGINAL:
Administrators at Ripon College have not granted approval for a Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) poster publicizing their 9/11 memorial because “students from a Muslim background would feel singled out and/or harassed,” according to YAF.
The flyers are provided by YAF for their “9/11: Never Forget Project” and feature pictures from various terrorist attacks including 9/11, the 2017 Pulse nightclub shooting, and the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, among others.
Administrators were critical of the poster, claiming that some of the events “don’t have anything to do with 9/11,” citing ISIS (which was previously named Al Qaeda in Iraq until 2013) and the Iranian hostage crisis, of which one administrator claimed, “I’m not sure I think the Iran hostage issue was Islamic terrorism.”
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Poster for YAF’s 9/11: Never Forget Project
The administration reportedly told the chapter that objections were brought to the administration and the bias incident team because the posters focus “relentlessly on one religious organization, one religious group, one religious identity,” and that “associating that one religious identity with terrorist attacks which go back far before 9/11 and after 9/11— creates for some students here an environment which they feel like they are not able to learn.”
Members of the Bias Protocol Board also said that the poster does not add “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.”
Administrators also raised concerns about the poster only displaying terrorism committed by Islamic terrorist organization. “It seems like the only terrorist activities brought up in this poster are those done by extremist Islamic groups, and so if I’m Muslim on this campus, like, ok, it sends the message that all terrorism happens by Muslims,” administrators reportedly said.
One administrator also said “the intent is admirable to talk about why we are killing each other,” according to YAF, but questioned why the club was focusing on 9/11 instead of school shootings.“That’s very admirable, and I support that, but what about school shootings?” the administrator asked. “We’ve had almost a school shooting a day for the last ten days, and we’re continuing to up the body count.”
The chapter used the same posters for their memorial last year, causing a bias report to be filed and resulting in a review and a meeting ahead of the planned memorial for this semester, according to YAF.
“Just as remembrances of horrific events carried out in the name of Nazism or Communism include honoring other victims of those ideological treacheries, so does the remembrance of the attacks carried out by radical Islamists on September 11, 2001,” YAF spokesman Spencer Brown said in an article.
Spencer also points out that while Ripon is a private institution, it is not “immune from criticism of its decisions, especially when they attempt to censor key moments in our nation’s history that would be forgotten if not for bold Young Americans for Freedom activists such as those in Ripon YAF.”