USF St. Pete took down Pride, BLM flags. Students want to know why.
Visitors to the University of South Florida’s St. Petersburg student union are typically greeted by a hall of flags representing the countries and identities of the school’s student body. Among them: Pride and Black Lives Matter flags.
But when all flags were taken down this week, some students were concerned the reason might have something to do with the state’s clampdown on diversity programming.
Skye Smith, the president of the St. Petersburg campus’ PRIDE Alliance for LGBTQ+ students, said she received an email Tuesday from an employee in the Office of Student engagement that said numerous flags would be coming down “due to mandate from an external entity that received a complaint about these flags.” The email specifically mentioned a Black Lives Matter flag, Pride flag, Palestinian flag and Pan-African flag.
Smith felt uneasy, wondering what that would mean for future meetings or events.
The Black Student Association at USF St. Petersburg posted on Instagram that the flags were ordered down “following a complaint to the governor’s office,” and that the group did not agree with the action. The group later posted that the Pride, Black Lives Matter and Pan-African flags were removed before other flags.
Nathan Tout-Puissant, president of the Black Student Association at USF St. Petersburg, declined to speak on behalf of the group as to why they believed the governor’s office was involved. But as an individual student, he said “the situation is much deeper than the physical flags.”
“As a student of color in the state of Florida, we tend to feel that there is little to no sense to understand life from our perspective, and we often feel that we go unseen, unvalued and unheard,” he said. “So having those flags up on our campus allowed us, or some of us, for the first time, to feel really seen and appreciated as people and safe in an environment.”
The governor’s office did not respond to questions about the flags. Carrie O’Brion, a spokesperson for the university, said USF did not receive any communication from the governor’s office regarding the student center, but that the university decided to take all flags down while evaluating the building to prepare for its renovation.
“During our review, it was noted there was not a reliable or comprehensive process for selecting and rotating the flags in the USC,” O’Brion said in an email. “We have temporarily removed all flags until we can convene a group of students, faculty and staff to solicit their input on all aspects of the renovation during the fall semester.”
In the meantime, O’Brion said the campus plans to hang a banner as part of its #SeenValuedHerd campaign launched last year, which emphasizes “commitment to making all members of the USF community feel welcome and appreciated.”
O’Brion said visitors “have periodically raised questions about the flag display, including how the flags are selected and where they are placed,” and that the university decided to take a step back to take a comprehensive look at decor.
O’Brion said a volunteer group of about six or seven students has given input related to the student center, but that the university plans to create “a larger group of students, faculty and staff to evaluate all aspects of the facility and review existing processes in the fall.”
Smith, the PRIDE president, said university officials have extended invitations to meet with the groups, but said she remained concerned. She said she chose USF St. Petersburg because of its reputation as a safe space for queer, Black and marginalized communities.
“Everyone is just very welcoming,” she said. “But right now, I think that we’re really taking a huge step back. It is a little bit scary, because this is for some people their only safe space that they have in their life at the moment, the only place where they feel like they can be their authentic selves and feel safe in doing so. So it definitely is a little scary to see that the university doesn’t kind of cover our backs in that way.”
Divya Kumar covers higher education for the Tampa Bay Times, in partnership with Open Campus.
