AIBU to say that graduation ceremonies are not the place to make political statements?

[anythingbutlillies]

Hard hat on.

DC's graduation today. Fabulous day, but it did not sit well with me that a few chose to unfurl a flag / raise a scarf while they were on the stage.
Just no! So very selfish.

Interested to hear if I am being precious?

Ukraine has been getting loads of support in financial terms and solidarity from the UK since the Russian invasion. The Conservative and Labour governments were and are all committed to supporting Ukraine by providing weapons and training to their soldiers. There was the Homes for Ukranians initiative allowing thousands of Ukrainians to come to the UK. There hasn't been anything similar for Gazans.

There is obviously some self interest in supporting Ukraine as if Russia achieves its objective of occupying Ukraine as part of Greater Russia, they won't stop there and could move onto some Nato countries and we would need to get involved.

No matter what your politics are, surely no-one could just dismiss the suffering of the civilians in Gaza, particularly women and children? The emaciated babies and children and the child amputees are surely innocent victims deserving of every one's sympathy even if you still dismiss the claims of genocide and war crimes.

Pro Palestinian does not equal anti semitic.

All of the Jewish people I know are pro-Palestine, so. I think it depends.

OP, I think universities have always been places where people shaped their idea of the world and were encouraged to think about things. I think a graduation ceremony makes a lot of sense as a place to protest/call attention to something. If it were actively disruptive, maybe not, but flags and banners aren't disruptive.

I don’t think you know what genocide is. Nor the history of that particular land. But I’m not here to educate you, so do you.

I don’t much like the idea of flags being waved at graduation ceremonies … mainly because of the disruption, rather than the politics. Graduation ceremonies are a nightmare to organise. The best ones have the students walk through, shake hands then sit down - and all applause is at the end (basically because otherwise Alice Adams gets loads and Benedict Williamson gets very little). If the speaker is very good, it can last up to 1.5 hours but any longer is hard on the audience.

The worst went on for over 3 hours and had applause for everyone individually. Some people did tricks on stage (one guy pretended to fall over) to get more applause. That was a hard one to sit through - and I was young at the time.

So if someone decides to carry a flag but doesn’t get any more stage time nor applause than everyone else then that is their look out. But if they stop and unfurl the flag to get a second round of applause then that isn’t cool. Someone has to follow them - and they’ll only get one round of applause.

Nope because Israel is a country that is currently carrying out a genocide. I do not associate Israel with automatically Jewish as it's a Zionism does not automatically mean Jewish. In fact many Zionists are Christian nationalists who believe that through Zionism rapture will happen. I am absolutely not antisemitic.

Also I'd encourage you to research how Israel treats Holocaust survivors because there is the biggest population of homeless survivors and they live in Israel.

Ah, I assumed from this that they were all pro-Palestine.

And Gaza is ruled by terrorists. So both countries have shitty governments. I don’t associate all Muslims with Hamas or the taliban either. Your post did sound amazingly antisemetic and the fact you want Israel not to exist kind of helps that opinion. Are you sure about the holocaust survivors? Really? Or are you just so anti semetic you’ll drag up any rumour?

You somehow forgot to mention that if a family friend were a hostage being tortured underground, you’d want to honour them too.

The Middle East and posters’ views on Palestine are irrelevant. Go on a march if you feel strongly.

The point here is whether it is appropriate to seek attention (for a cause and yourself) at an occasion such as a graduation.

I have a sneaking suspicion that some posters would not be so enthusiastic if the flag waver did not align with them politically. And it’s all very well to be “proud” of your offspring when they’re in a nice safe space. Really brave to float a scarf around at a graduation ceremony. Twerps.

And yet the two manage to cross over so often...

At my son's graduation last year at the Royal Festival Hall, a young man (who was possibly Palastinian) pulled out a flag concealed under his shirt or jacket as he walked across the stage, and the place erupted in cheers. It would not have been easy for him to have smuggled this in as everyone was searched. Yes, some Jewish students' families went a bit quiet, but Netanyahu's genocide on Gaza is a Lekud policy only, and there are millions of Jewish people around the world who are critical of his actions. Students always were political and I am glad to see that intelligent, young people are standing up for what they believe in again.

If I was a parent of a child who did this I'd be utterly mortified to have raised such a virtue signalling, woke, attention seeking brat with zero knowledge of history and zero knowledge of how to behave at a formal occasion.

This insistence that Pro-Palestine isn’t antisemitic means that you get people ignoring blatant antisemitism, or aligning themselves with antisemites, or being antisemitic themselves because they don’t recognise it. There are an awful lot of pro-Palestinians who are antisemitic.

So you see on this thread denial that there have been attacks on Jews and synagogues. People on the marches chant support for Houthis whose slogan is ‘A curse upon Jews’. And people like Gary Lineker end up retweeting antisemitic posts.

Really more care is needed. And to stop telling Jewish people that there’s nothing to fear because no one is being antisemitic when they support Palestine.

This should not be allowed at this type of ceremony,The student should lose there degree for this we need to be firmer

If you can't be angry about the world as a student - then we have no hope anything will change

ANyone who is offended by a flag being waved by a student who wants the war to stop needs to re-focus their attention and be angry about 17 000 dead children in gaza - the most amputees of any war on earth - children shot in the head and chest by the IDF

And now they want to herd every last living person in gaza into an internment cap for ever.

Well there might be a Venn diagram but it’s not a perfect circle. Absolutely ridiculous to conflate criticism of a government’s genocidal actions with anti-semitism. In that case, can Netanyahu behave however he likes without any rebuke because he happens to be Jewish and the leader of Israel.

Universities have always been political. This is now new. And the older generation have always wished the younger generation would shut up about issues they would rather not think about. Be grateful a bit of flag waving was the only thing that went wrong for you that day.

Of course they are. Anti-semitism is ancient and some people will take any excuse to cloak their bigotry in seemingly respectable outrage. But voices do need to be loud when more than 55,000 Palestinians have been killed.

How so many people are able to look past children being starved to death and pulled out of rubble is beyond me. What privilege you all have to look the other way when ethnic cleansing is happening.

I hope the OP managed to enjoy their celebratory graduation lunch/dinner afterwards and the flag didn’t sour the taste of the champagne.

Ah, 'virtue signalling'. The accusation levelled at anyone who expresses an ethical position in a way that the accuser doesn't like. Ouch. That'll hurt.

Thing is a lot of young people decide to take some kind of stand, or make some kind of public gesture in support of something they feel strongly about. And quite often that gesture is either slightly crass or pretty ineffective. I think this is one of those cases, to be honest.

On the other hand, making crass and awkward gestures in support of something or other is as important a part of being at university as any of the other rites of passage one is expected to go through. So I'd be a bit disappointed if it didn't happen.

Also, by the way, for every post complaining about young people making political statements there are three complaining about young people being unengaged and apathetic.

Not for the first time, I'm of the opinion that the poor sods can't win.

Indulging in war porn is grim. Have some respect.

Once again for those that are imposing their own narrative on this thread, I never said that anything 'went wrong'.

Some people seem to have trouble understanding that it's possible to have views on political / worldwide events and stand by such causes whilst also believing that a graduation ceremony is not the place for these views to be aired - which is what my OP was asking.

Of course it's virtue signalling. It achieves absolutely nothing. Has peace in the middle east suddenly been achieved because some trendoid student has waved a flag around?

So what?

It's boring , delays an already tedious thing and should be clamped down on .

🙄
Any need for that last sentence?

What do you want me to say? That we partied hard and long and spent several hundred £ celebrating or that we donated what we would have spent to a cause close to our hearts?