While the playing of America’s national anthem has long been a tradition at college commencement exercises across the country, one college in California quietly chose to end their tradition of playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” during their graduation ceremony this year.
According to a video on the college’s YouTube channel, Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., ceased their annual tradition of honoring America by playing the national anthem during graduation in May. While the school did not provide a reason for abruptly halting the tradition, a number of students expressed their approval, saying that it made the school more inclusive of its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals students.
Getting rid of the anthem “solidifies Pomona’s support for DACA students (and other Pomona students who have limited freedom in the US) making it a more international institution,” one student told the Claremont Independent, speaking anonymously. “The Pomona student body (mostly) knows that American is not ‘the land of the free,’ as the Star Spangled Banner suggests.”
While there is certainly no requirement that colleges honor America during their commencement ceremonies, the Pomona College incident is merely the latest representation of a desire by both college students and administrations to purge acts of patriotism from campus.
Last year, the student senate at the University of California-Davis voted in favor of allowing the American flag to be removed from its meetings after a number of students argued that “patriotism is different for every individual.”
Earlier this year, administrators at Stanford University were forced to amend school policy that banned the Stanford College Republicans from placing an image of the American flag on the club’s T-shirts, after admitting the policy was “overly restrictive.”
Such occurrences have unfortunately become commonplace on college campuses, as both liberal professors and students have embraced Colin Kaepernick’s movement of refusing to show respect for displays of American patriotism.
[Related: Colin Kaepernick to subpoena Trump, Pence to testify in his case against the NFL]
