slotsdreamer Fraternity Brothers Balk at a $515,000 Party for Defending the Flag

Updated:2024-09-27 14:30 Views:146

The image went viral as protests over the Israel-Hamas war rattled college campuses around the country last spring: two dozen or so fraternity members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill shielding a wrinkled American flag from pro-Palestinian protesters who had already taken it down once.

Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, were quick to highlight the episode in speeches and videos. But a GoFundMe campaign created for the fraternity brothers captured the most attention. Its organizer, John Noonan, who has worked for a number of Republicans in Washington, wrote on the GoFundMe page that “commie losers” had invaded college campuses and that the U.N.C. “Brohemians” had protected the flag from an “unwashed Marxist horde.”

So, Mr. Noonan said, he needed America’s help to “throw ’em a rager.”

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Several young men dressed in blue jackets, red ties and white shirts walk through a crowd in a stadium carrying American flags.

Fraternity members from the University of North Carolina carried the American flag at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Some other fraternity members have been hesitant to promote a conservative cause.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times

In less than a week, he raised $515,492. A moment of heated emotions over the war in Gaza had become the impetus for a giant party that Mr. Noonan said would feature beer, country music and Greek organizations.

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The party, which Mr. Noonan is calling “Flagstock,” took place on Labor Day in the parking lot of the Chapel Hill office of the American Legion, a veterans organization. Musical guests closely aligned with Mr. Trump performed. But despite all of the pomp, the event has prompted frustrations on the Chapel Hill campus, most notably from many of the fraternity brothers who surrounded the flag on the school’s quadrangle that day in April.

In interviews before the eventslotsdreamer, several members of the U.N.C. chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish fraternity, said they were disappointed that the money raised on their behalf was paying for a party. They said they would rather that a significant portion of the money go to a charity that supports Jewish organizations or relief efforts in Gaza.