University of North Carolina fraternity members who helped defend the American flag against protesters in viral images spoke with Fox News Digital about the chaos.
– A group of fraternity members at the University of North Carolina (UNC) captured the attention of the nation last week when they held up the American flag as pro-Palestinian protesters tried to replace the Stars and Stripes with a Palestinian flag.
After enduring nearly an hour of screaming, slurring and flying objects, the fraternity brothers held up the fallen American flag until it could be restored in a display that many considered a heroic act of patriotism. A GoFundMe was started to throw a party for the fraternities involved, which raised over half a million dollars by the time donations closed.
Will, a member of UNC’s Phi Delta Theta chapter, told Fox News Digital that in the lead-up to last Tuesday’s protest, he spent time talking to people to better understand exactly what they aimed to achieve with their demonstrations. Will said he and his friend Ben went to see the protest in the early afternoon, but ultimately left. Once they heard the American flag had been ripped down and replaced by the Palestinian flag, they rushed back to campus.
«We were kind of baffled,» Will said of his experience watching the Palestinian flag raise up on the flag pole at the American university.
«My biggest fear was that they had taken it down, it was under their feet or they’re gonna try to light fire to it or something, but it ended up being taken by police,» he added. «We hung out, [but] we were getting increasingly frustrated because we’re both relatively neutral in the conflict. At the end of the day, it’s a world away from here and we can’t make much of a difference from North Carolina. It immediately became an issue for me and for a lot of other people that the American flag came down.»
Colby Kelley, president of UNC’s Turning Point chapter and member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, told Fox News Digital that members of Turning Point held up a smaller American flag while the Palestinian flag was on display.
«We were over there holding a smaller American flag to try to show that there was a presence here on campus, that what their actions were doing was a large disgrace to the country at large,» he said.
At that point, Will said they witnessed police officers mobilizing and saw Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts approaching the protest to address students. At that point, Will said he and his friends removed themselves from the immediate action since they were within ten feet of the flagpole as the pro-Palestinian crowd started to get «increasingly violent towards the police.»
«I watched police officers get hit with these water bottles, food, chairs, people were throwing anything they could find,» he said. «So we’re walking out and all of a sudden it looked like from our point of view that something happened, I think the protesters rushed the police.
