Ramie Abounaja, a Palestinian-American biomedical engineering undergrad at George Washington University, had hung a Palestinian flag outside of his 23rd St. NW dorm room window earlier this year — until a university police department (UPD) officer showed up on Oct. 26 and asked Abounaja to take the flag down.
Complaints had been filed about the flag, according to the DCist and the Washington Post, because the school has a policy against flying banners or flags outside of dorm room windows for safety reasons.
When the campus officer showed up at Abounaja’s room to ask that the flag be removed, Abounaja complied immediately.However, as the Washington Post reported, an automated system was triggered when the campus officer entered the incident into the school’s UPD database. Abounaja received a “warning letter” on Nov. 3 which read,
“As a member of the larger residential community we hope that you will be respectful of your peers and aware of your behavior. The act of an individual has a profound effect on the community. Subsequent reports naming you as a subject may result in disciplinary action taken by the University.”
What many D.C. outsiders may not know is that GWU has a substantial population of Jewish students — and Abounaja immediately felt that he was being targeted for his Palestinian heritage.
While the campus isn’t known for fostering discord regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, students have reportedly felt an underlying sense of discrimination and Islamophobia, especially with heightened fears of terrorism sweeping the country.
Abounaja explained to GWU administrators in a letter that he felt “singled out” for displaying a flag to represent his heritage, just like “dozens of students, fraternities and other student groups do” at the university.
GWU President Steven Knapp later released a statement explaining that “the officer had no idea what kind of flag this was.”
“I have personally apologized to the student for this unfortunate incident and assured him that the university’s actions were in no way a response to his expression of his beliefs or opinions,” the statement read. “The student was understandably alarmed and believed that the warning was based on the fact that the object he had hung from his window was a Palestinian flag.”
However, as Mic noted — and which Abounaja supported with his own photos — the university doesn’t seem to be enforcing that rule consistently. And considering that the school’s undergraduate tuition is just over $50,000 per year — nearly $20,000 higher than the average $31,000 tuition of a private college in the U.S. — students are investing too much money into the institution to ignore a perceived act of cultural or racial discrimination.
Knapp’s statement also wasn’t released until after Palestine Legal, a civil rights organization, got involved in the situation.
“Ramie’s situation isn’t unique,” said staff attorney Radhika Sainath. “These incidents are happening all over the country. Ramie is courageous, but there’s a lot of fear right now for students of Middle Eastern, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim descent that if they speak out, they’ll be attacked, not be able to get a job, or be accused of supporting terrorism. There are so many more Ramies that we don’t know about.”
