Mill River Union High School raised a Black Lives Matter flag on Tuesday, more than a year after a student submitted her first proposal to the school board for the cause.
Around 12 hours later, it was gone.
Residents who live within the Mill River Union Unified School District, which encompasses Clarendon, North Clarendon, Shrewsbury, Tinmouth and Wallingford, have been engaged in a heated debate about whether to raise the flag since the student made the pitch to the board in June of 2020.
The school board initially approved her proposal, but after board members received threats of litigation from members of the public, they backtracked, devising a policy for anyone who wants to raise a flag. The student, Reese Eldert-Moore, resubmitted her application, which the board accepted in June 2021.
Eldert-Moore, who was 17 when she first submitted the proposal, said she’s been targeted over the past year by community members who opposed raising the flag. During the debate last summer, her family received so much backlash — sometimes deteriorating into harassment — that they moved from Rutland County.
After the school board approved Eldert-Moore’s second proposal, the board said school administrators should raise the flag at the beginning of the school year. On Tuesday, they closed the campus in North Clarendon to everyone who is not usually on the premises — such as media, protesters, delivery trucks — and raised the flag at around 10:30 a.m. It included a rainbow stripe on its side to represent the LGBTQ+ community.
Superintendent David Younce said video surveillance shows that the flag had disappeared by around 9:50 that night. When the school resource officer arrived the next morning around 6:45, he told Younce about the flag’s disappearance. Younce told the officer he should open an investigation.
“Law enforcement is investigating the matter and the district will be filing a police report and likely pursuing charges based on the outcome of that investigation,” he wrote to the community in an email Wednesday.
Eldert-Moore told VTDigger Wednesday over text message that the theft aligned with her expectations.
“I knew it would be stolen,” she wrote. “I was not surprised when I was told.”
Two individuals appear to have participated in the theft, Younce said, but other than that, he knows little about the investigation, which is ongoing.
In his email to the community, Younce also said that the district is “fully committed to supporting those who are personally and negatively affected by this action and will continue to do so.”
“The flag was raised to communicate the district’s support for its students, especially those who may feel marginalized or unseen,” he wrote. “The individual or individuals who chose to remove the flag clearly delivered the exact opposite message to our students and community. We are saddened that this occurred.”
Younce told VTDigger he has received many replies to the two emails he has sent to the community, and within those responses, he said there “really wasn’t much middle ground.”
“The responses varied from ‘you guys should have never raised this flag in the first place’ and ‘you should have expected this to happen’ and ‘how dare you’ to ‘thank you for the way you’re addressing this; this is really sad that this occurred,’” he said.
At around 2:15 p.m., Younce sent the community another update: A community member donated an identical flag to the school, he said.
While the school has typically kept its flags raised 24 hours a day, all flags will be taken down every evening because of the theft, Younce said.
In the days leading up to the flag raising, advisory classes, which are similar to homeroom, hosted conversations about the forthcoming event, Younce said. Teachers led discussions about how to include all students at school and about the meaning of the flag’s symbolism.
“I’m confident that teachers in classrooms who are working with students probably do find themselves needing to navigate situations where people have different perspectives,” Younce said. “It’s important that we model, as adults, how to talk through that type of stuff in a reasonable and supportive and kind way.”
Eldert-Moore, who graduated in the spring, said the past year has been stressful. She’s been worried those who disagree with her might vandalize her home. Last summer, someone threw paint on a Black Lives Matter sign she made.
She said she’s been angry that it took the district so long to raise “a flag that loves people who need it the most.”
She said she’s extremely relieved to be removed from “the constant hounding” that took place after she filed her proposal, and that she no longer has to attend the school board meetings where the arguments, at times, were directed at her.
“But has my passion for this particular issue changed?” she wrote via text message. “No. When I heard the flag was taken down, I was ON it. I will forever be passionate about racism, sexism and homophobia in schools. Especially at Mill River.”
