PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Brown University officials are investigating after some students trashed small American flags that lined walkways along the university’s Main Green Thursday in honor of Veterans Day.

Sophomore Nicholas Strada told the Brown Daily Herald he found several small flags snapped in half, and others pulled up and thrown in a pile, when he made his way through the area after class Thursday and decided to take action.

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“It would’ve really bothered me to see that done to the flag any day, but just because it was Veterans Day and there was a ceremony, it was a little extra disturbing,” Strada told the student news site, adding that he views the flags as symbols of “the freedoms that everyone enjoys.”

The flags were erected along the pathways as part of the school’s annual Veterans Day ceremony, which was sponsored by the Office of Student Veterans and Commissioning Programs. Strada told The Washington Post he worked to put the flags back in place, and bought some tape to fix those with broken sticks, and noticed several people tearing them up as he attempted to repair the damage.

As he was replacing the piles of removed flags, he came across a student walking with several of them in hand, he said.

“That wasn’t the only person,” he said. “Someone was walking down the path and stomping on them one by one. I went over and nicely asked, ‘Could you not do that? People just put them up.’ … I explained they were for Veterans Day. She said, ‘I don’t care about that right now,’ and walked off.”

“I was out there for a while,” Strada said. “A few people stopped to help.”

Junior Leah Zavalick also attempted to help by organizing a sit-in on the Main Green to fix the broken flags and protect the ones that were left, while others debated the incident on social media.

On a Facebook page designed to show anonymous appreciation, Brown Bear Admirers, one student posted “I’d like to appreciate everyone who has been removing the flags from the Main Green,” the Daily Herald reports.

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“As much as I know that these flags are there to represent Veterans Day, when I look at them, all I feel is overwhelming nausea, and all I see is a symbol of the oppressing white nationalism that has jeopardized myself and so many others at Brown and abroad,” the post read.

When Zavalick posted on a class Facebook page asking for help to repair the broken flags, she also received “hateful comments and disrespect,” she said.

One student wrote: “How can you support something as stupid as the American flag?” Zavalick said.

“If only these people put this much energy into protecting marginalized people as they (did) into protecting these flags,” another posted.

Freshman Katie Hammaker pointed out the irony of the comments for the Daily Herald.

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“I think what a lot of people don’t realize is that veterans are marginalized people,” she said. “When they come back from deployments, they have trouble finding work, finding schooling opportunities and being mainstreamed back into civilian life.

“Those American flags …. Were to support and show gratitude and solidarity for the marginalized group of veterans,” she said.

Tristan Hood, a former U.S. Air Force soldier who completed two tours of duty in Iraq, was one of several students working to fix the flag on Thursday.

He said much of the opposition to the American flag, and growing hostility toward veterans, stems from ignorance.

“They call us babykillers … they say all we do is hide behind a veil of integrity and honor and go around the world enslaving people,” Hood told the Post, adding that some seem to believe the military is comprised entirely of white males.

“We have everybody,” he said. “It’s a melting pot.”

Hood told the Post he greatly appreciates the students who worked to fix and defend the flag after the vandalism, as well as those who attended the Veterans Day ceremony at the school on Friday.

“For me the reason the flag is very important is because I’ve seen a lot of people come home under that flag,” he said. “They don’t get to go back to see their families.”

Brown spokesman Cass Cliatt emailed a statement about the vandalism to the Post:

We are investigating the accounts of vandalism to American flags set out on Brown’s College Green to celebrate Veterans Day. Every year members of our campus community come together to honor our veterans and their commitment to serving our country. The flags were planted a day in advance as part of an event held on Veterans Day, where student veterans and ROTC undergraduates joined students, faculty and staff from across campus for a Veterans Day procession and ceremony. According to some accounts we have received, members of our community diligently worked to restore the removed flags, some of which had been removed and left nearby. Other flags were removed by the organizers of the event and replaced the morning of the Veterans Day ceremony. We do not condone the activities that led to the flags being removed, and destruction of property is subject to disciplinary review.