On Wednesday afternoon, I walked out of the library preparing to walk to my statistics class. It was the day after the election and I thought very little of it. My feelings of optimistic indifference regarding a Trump victory were clearly very different from those of my classmates. I stepped onto the quad only to be greeted by a swarm of hundreds of students standing on the steps of the Mary Graydon Center. I paused there for a moment, waiting to see what was happening when a student shouted, "oh my god, they're burning another one!" A small cloud of smoke rose into the sky. The source: a small American flag that was burned at the hands of a demonstrator.

I should emphasize that I fully support our First Amendment rights. We are blessed to live in a country where we are able to have demonstrations like this and not be penalized by our government. The Supreme Court Case Texas v. Johnson (1989) gives us the ability to desecrate an American flag under the protected speech portion of the United States Constitution. However, as I watched that small cloud of smoke rise into the sky I was not thinking of the First Amendment or government revolution, nothing even close to that. I was thinking of a small boy holding his father's flag after the casket was lowered into the ground. I was thinking of a rowboat full of Cuban immigrants trying to get to the United States in hope of a better life. I was thinking of a hardworking grandmother who will never live to see the day when women get equal pay.

America is an amazing country built on the foundation of hope. However that hope is not a constant in our history. That hope was for an end to slavery in the 1860s, that hope was for a woman's right to vote in the 1910s, that hope was for the right to gay marriage in 2015, and now that hope is for the future. I do not care how others choose to demonstrate their feelings so long as it stays non-violent. What I do care about is respecting others views enough to see things from every perspective. I will never know the struggle that a person has gone through to make them want to burn the American flag. I will likely never know their struggle so I am not at liberty to pass judgement. It is so critical that we make an effort to understand other people's values instead of getting stuck in our own views because it is when we begin to pass judgement on things that we do not understand that things become unproductive and unhealthy.

Quite honestly, following the election my feelings regarding a Trump presidency were far less extreme than those of my peers. I am a woman, but I am a white woman from a well-off family who will never really know the struggle that minorities endure every day in the United States. What has really allowed me to expand my knowledge throughout this entire process has been just listening to the conversations among my classmates as well as my teammates. I have heard the stories of young Muslim women, of African-American men, of my political science professor and of my coach. The interesting thing is that while everyone has a different perspective, the most enlightening conversations are those that speak to the future, not the past.

I do not condone flag burning because to me, the American flag symbolizes hope for what will come next. I do not care if you are a Trump supporter, a Clinton supporter, or anything in between. This election just made it all the more clear that the past is the past and that if we want to achieve this greatness that Trump is so adamant about then we need to look towards new standards in the future. So instead of burning the American flag, maybe have a conversation, change one person's view. Maybe hold a speaker series to educate people, or organize a march to draw attention. I know that things like flag burning are more likely to bring attention to a cause, but as we saw in Florida and Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, it only takes a small group to make a big difference.