Skull and Bones Member Burns American Flag
By now you’ve probably heard about those crazy Yalies who burned that flag. In brief: Three Yale students — Said Hyder Akbar ’07, Nikolaos Angelopoulos ’10, and Farhad Anklesaria ’10 — were thrown in jail after setting alight an ol’ Star Spangled that was still attached to a New Haven residence. The backstory that’s got everyone so huffy, though, is that Akbar is from Pakistan and his dad is a former governor of a province in Afghanistan and adviser to Hamid Karzai. But wait! The juicy little morsel that the YDN, the New Haven Register, and the New York Times forgot to include?
Akbar’s in Skull and Bones.
Can you imagine what will happen when Akbar and President Bush meet up at the next Bonesman retreat to Deer Island? Awwwwwwkward!
We only have one source on this, but until we can confirm, we want to believe our inner conspiracy-dar. One of the trio has already posted bail — can’t Akbar get a presidential pardon or something?* And my-dad’s-an-Afghani-governor notwithstanding, the guy’s got the overachiever resume to back up a tap: translator in Afghanistan, not to mention he’s on pace to write more memoirs than Kissinger, from his book to his NPR dispatch to this series he did for Slate.
Taking a step back, though, the fact that Akbar is a Boner only ripens the tale. From what little info we’ve gleaned (and as the Times points out, there’s not much to glean), this isn’t a story about politics. It’s about idiocy so supreme that these dudes should start hoping it becomes a free speech case. Just look at the chronology laid out in the YDN:
[Police spokeswoman Bonnie] Posick said police officers first encountered the students when they passed the trio while driving down Chapel Street into Fair Haven. The students flagged the officers down, she said, asking them how to get back to campus.
The students told the officers they had been visiting a friend and had gotten lost while returning home, she said.
Later, when the officers were driving back down Chapel Street to see if the students had found their way back, they saw that a flag hanging off of 512 Chapel St. was engulfed in flames, Posick said. While one officer removed the burning flag, the other officer stopped the students, who were further down the street.
Just to be clear: These intellectual rockstars decided to flag down a police vehicle in the middle of the night, then burned a flag on the same street shortly thereafter. While it was still attached to a house. Put away the picket signs, First Amendment fans, and forget the paddy wagon, neocons. These guys need to be put on the short bus.
*Correction: This article originally stated that Akbar had posted bail. He has not.
