Rebuttal Against the Gonville & Caius Flag Proposal

by Charlie Summers

As a trans student, you can understand my hurt to learn via email that the college chose not to fly the trans flag this year. To find out through a notification on the Venn that enough students flicked through the Moodle page easily selecting the progress flag, the national flag of Wales and of Ireland, and the Tibetan prayer flag, and chose to skip over the trans flag was heartbreaking.

I understand as the new bulletin put it that "the transgender community is represented in the progress flag", but you can see how it felt that the student body was deliberately making the choice to exclude their trans peers.

Last term, I attended an event marking trans day of remembrance, in which we sat and listened to the names of every trans person who died that year be read out; the whole ceremony took well over twenty minutes. The powerpoint projected overhead which included photos and names of the dead and how it was that they died, took far longer. Unfortunately, there were members of our community who died that we did not have the names of, who died with names that were not their own. Among the causes of death were decapitation, stoning, stabbing, and lynching. I remember sitting in that hall and feeling a great fear and sorrow. I myself am grateful to have never experienced such brutality. Nevertheless, what I have experienced is a denial of care, bullying and harassment from peers as well as random men on the street, and the increased politicisation and rejection of my identity. It is for this reasons it hurt to find out the trans flag would not be flown, as I felt it was indicative of the move towards repression and intolerance that we are seeing globally in regard to trans people.

I have been a student of this college for four years, and I know its reputation. In my first year, I participated in a protest against the college’s refusal to represent its lgbt population. We each hanged pride flags from our window against college regulation, and ignored the administration’s calls to remove them. The ability to vote for student flag days was the college's compromise to this resistance, a largely unsatisfying one I have to admit.

Regardless I can tell how, after the students were allowed to finally have a say on what the college would represent, how I walked up senate’s passage swelling with pride at the sight of the trans flag flying high over the tower of Caius. It is amazing to see your community represented especially at such a difficult time politically, especially from a college with such a reputation; it is amazing to know the student body stands with you.

Now, to my point, I don't have the same personal connection as I'm sure many students do to their national flags. I stand with and did vote for the Welsh and Irish national flag, as well I appreciate and stand in solidarity with the Tibetan cause. I am glad that these students were able to see their concerns represented, and I think it is important that they are, even if it’s for something as simple as a pedestrian walking past, seeing the flag, and deciding to google it. As performative as it may be, I think flying a flag generates support and awareness that alongside activism goes a long way to helping a community. It is for this reason that I think the flag day voting should remain as it currently is.

I would love students to be given another opportunity to show their solidarity for their trans peers in future years. I would love to someone to have the same experience I did walking up senate's passage, and I would love the student body to speak up and memorialise those trans persons who have been murdered so brutally- something which, I'm afraid- the progress flag simply doesn’t do enough to commemorate.

As stated earlier, even having to have a vote on which of our communities are represented is already a compromise, I do not know why we would want to compromise any further. I understand that this proposal does allow for more flags to be voted on “should there be a growing interest” but believe that ladening this process with even more bureaucracy is unnecessarily restrictive and limiting. I think the proposal is indicative of the college wanting to restrict our ability to express ourselves; I have seen throughout my time here how they do their utmost to suppress student expression, and I truly don’t think it harms anyone by having a wide selection of choices for our flag days, besides offending the conservative sensibilities of senior administration.

by Charlie Summers