Officials at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, the semi-prestigious flagship school of the state’s college system, attempted to prohibit a student-led memorial honoring victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks this week by claiming that it could interfere with campus lawn-care efforts.

Forceful pushback by students led the administrators to back down — quickly, reports The College Fix.

The University of Illinois chapter of the College Republicans initially approached the administration weeks ago to request permission to plant 2,977 small American flags close together on the quad to honor the 2,977 people who died during terrorist attack (including over 400 police officers and firefighters).

Dementro Powell, an assistant director for student programs and activities at the taxpayer-funded school, declined the request.

According to Chris Piper, president of the campus College Republicans chapter, Powell claimed that planting the small flags on the quad would obstruct with the “irrigation system” and might negatively affect the administration’s lawn care efforts.

Piper observed that each of the miniature flags would be pushed half an inch in the ground. However, Powell was unmoved.

According to Piper, the university official suggested that the College Republicans could place the 2,977 flags in 2,977 cups of sand or in 2,977 individual cardboard foundations. In any case, the flag sticks could not enter the ground.

In an email obtained by the Fix, Piper responded by noting that either alternative would “be a great cost and inconvenience.”

Piper also observed that the College Republicans had planted exactly the same flag memorial on the University of Illinois quad in 2012.

Despite his concerns about flags sticking half an inch in the ground on the quad, Powell also proposed that the College Republicans spread the flags out on the quad instead of putting them in a central place. The student activities assistant failed to explain how spreading the flags throughout the quad would diminish any harm to the irrigation system.

On Tuesday, the administration was still insisting that there would be no centralized memorial honoring the people who died as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The College Republicans responded with a grassroots effort. Hundreds of students overwhelmed the University of Illinois chancellor’s office with calls demanding that the 9/11 memorial be allowed.

In short order, school officials caved. Powell, the assistant director for student programs, was overruled.

“Thank you to everyone that has shown such great support of our effort to hold a 9/11 memorial on the Quad,” the College Republicans Facebook page announced late Wednesday afternoon. “Your efforts have been noticed by us and the University. Thankfully, we have reached an agreement that will allow us to place all 2,977 flags for each victim on the Quad on Friday. Without your support, this would not have been accomplished.”



The three-campus University of Illinois system is notable for persistently embracing terrorism.

Both the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and the University of Illinois at Chicago have boasted bona fide American terrorists on their faculties. (RELATED: TERRORIST UNIVERSITY: The University Of Illinois System Keeps Hiring Terrorists)

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign has employed James Kilgore, an adjunct instructor of global studies and urban planning, a felon and a former member of the infamous Symbionese Liberation Army. (RELATED: PRIORITIES: Will University Of Illinois Employ Terrorist Murderer Or Take $4.5 MILLION Gift?)

The Symbionese Liberation Army was the notorious terrorist organization that kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst. The group also attempted two bank robberies. Kilgore participated in a 1975 bank robbery during which bank customer Myrna Opsahl was murdered.

Opsahl, who bled to death on the floor of the bank, was a 42-year-old mother of four.

The University of Illinois at Chicago, a dismal and endless slab of concrete that is easily one of the ugliest campuses in America, was the well-known professional home of unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers from 1987 until his retirement in 2010.

Ayers, the son of a very wealthy former CEO of Commonwealth Edison, was a co-founder and leader of the Weather Underground, a communist revolutionary group.

He was heavily involved in Chicago’s “Days of Rage” riot in 1969, which cost taxpayers in Chicago and the state of Illinois about $183,000. That’s over $1.13 million in today’s dollars.

The Weather Underground also conducted a series of bombings and attempted bombings of banks and the United States Capitol, the Pentagon and other government buildings. In 1970, three of Ayers’s spectacularly incompetent colleagues died in a Greenwich Village townhouse explosion trying to make a nail bomb.

From 1970 to 1973, Ayers’s wife, Northwestern University law professor and fellow Weather Undergrounder Bernardine Dohrn, was a permanent fixture on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list. In 1969, Dohrn threatened attacks on college graduation ceremonies across the country “where the big people will come as speakers.” Also in 1969, Dohrn expressed support for Charles Manson and his followers because “they killed those pigs.”

Ayers fled prosecution after an accidental Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.

After his days as a federal fugitive ended (because charges were dropped due to illegal FBI snooping), Ayers earned a Ph.D.

In a 2001 book, he admitted that he participated in bombings of the New York City Police Department headquarters, the U.S. Capitol Building and the Pentagon in the early 1970s. (RELATED: Inside The Daily Caller’s Dinner With Former Weather Underground Terrorists)

In 2015, Illinois became the only state in America where a lawmaker felt the need to introduce a bill that would prevent anyone who has been convicted of terrorism-related crimes from teaching courses at taxpayer-funded colleges and universities. (RELATED: America 2015: Proposed Illinois Law Would Ban TERRORIST PROFESSORS)

Follow Eric on Twitter. Like Eric on Facebook. Send education-related story tips to erico@dailycaller.com.