Dear Editor:
Oregon State University, a public university located in Corvallis, has refused to remove an offensive flag from its building. The local community has requested this removal as early as November, and has offered an alternative flag for display in their building. However, OSU states it is using this flag to honor students, not countries, governments or politics.
This has long been a sensitive topic and it is the trigger of PTSD in over 2,000 Vietnamese students currently attending OSU whose grandparents, parents and/or they themselves were fortunate enough to have been able to survive the perilous journey by boat to flee from dictatorial rule.
Common present-day communist tactics have received worldwide attention, as coronavirus-infected journalists and bloggers who beg for the world to help their countries disappear. The communist flag displayed at OSU does not represent the students currently attending the school. It offends the students, their parents helping support them financially and emotionally, and their grandparents who have spent half their lives or over half their lives fighting in the war to give them one simple thing: freedom.
Students, including international students from Vietnam who are afraid to speak out against the regime they still hold citizenship under, are kindly pleading OSU to remove the communist flag of Vietnam and instead better represent the university’s student population by displaying Vietnam’s Freedom Flag.
Minh Ly Tran,
Corvallis
