| A new flag flap: Should LSU fly Taiwan colors? 04/10/2001 Associated Press
BATON ROUGE, La. – A fight over whether Taiwan's flag should hang on the campus of Louisiana State University has pitted Chinese students against Taiwanese students and the school's administration.
The months-old dispute has caught the attention of Chinese diplomats, who stepped in to try to persuade the university to side with the Chinese students.
Late last year, a group of Taiwanese students asked that Taiwan's flag be added to the nearly 150 hanging inside LSU's International Cultural Center.
Hanging from the ceiling inside, in a room called the Hall of Nations, are flags representing the countries of LSU students from around the world. The red flag of China with its five gold stars is among them, but Taiwan's flag is not.
"We think we should be treated equally, and we think we should be included as a member of the university community," said Ming Lee, president of the 20-member Taiwanese Student Association.
Many Chinese argue that most of the world recognizes democratic Taiwan as part of communist China. Beijing's government is a member of the United Nations and holds diplomatic status with the United States. Taiwan's does not.
"That's why we are sticking on our request not to have their flag in here," said Zhadyang Wu, a member of the Chinese Student and Scholars Association.
The matter leaves the cultural center's board, which usually meets quietly and decides pedestrian matters, caught up in an international dispute between China and Taiwan.
Morgan Knull, a graduate student and member of the cultural center's board, said the board decided to resolve the matter by drafting a policy to cover all requests to hang flags at the center.
When it looked as though LSU might favor the Taiwanese students' wishes and add their flag, China's general consulate in Houston wrote a letter to LSU Chancellor Mark Emmert urging him not to.
On March 16, the cultural center's board adopted a policy to allow any flag from a country whose passport the U.S. State Department recognizes. Since Taiwanese students have Taiwanese passports, their flag can be added to the Hall of Nations.
Officials plan to add their flag sometime at the end of the spring semester.
But the dispute did not end there.
Chinese students said the passport rule was not logical. One of the group's members recently protested on campus with a sign mocking the policy, suggesting the Hall of Nations be renamed the "Hall of Passport."
The Chinese students also suggested a compromise: hanging Taiwan's Olympic flag, which is not a national symbol and, thus, not offensive to the Chinese students. But Mr. Ming rejected that idea.
Mr. Knull said the board's new policy was open in the spirit of cultural exchange. Although the board acknowledges that the dispute is political, the center's role is not political, he said.
"The question of Taiwan and China will be dueled out on a different level from here," Mr. Knull said.
The Hall of Nations came about five years ago when the cultural center renovated a room that once featured a church ceiling, replacing it with a secular ceiling featuring flags "from each country from which LSU has at least one student," a flier from the time states.
Hanging the flags "implies an endorsement of all the foreign policy positions associated with a country, and that's where there is a disconnect in our understanding of the Hall of Nations' purpose and the Chinese Students' and Scholars Association's understanding of the display of flags," Mr. Knull said.
Greg Vincent, vice provost for academic affairs, said the administration suggested the new flag policy because it tends to be accommodating.
"They meant for this to be inclusive and depoliticize these issues," Mr. Vincent said. "This indeed is an educational institution, and they want to emphasize that."
Last week, representatives from the Chinese student group said they would withdraw from the cultural center if Taiwan's flag is hung there. International students pay a special fee to fund programs at the center. Group members said they would ask the university if they could stop paying the fee.
|
