The opinion page of the Cornell Daily Sun has lately been a more exciting place than usual, what with Kitsch editor-in-chief Peter Fritch’s open letter to the SAFC, John David-Brown’s long overdue parody of the irritatingly confessive “25 Things” phenom, and columnists taking sides in the war in Gaza—sometimes in a cogent and engaging way, sometimes not so much. With all the barbed words flying back and forth, it would be easy to ignore a more pointed threat that lurks under our very noses.

Last week, the Islamic Alliance for Justice placed 1,300 small black flags along pathways on central campus, one for each Palestinian death since the conflict began. The flags made a striking visual statement that resonated powerfully—from far away, it looked like a thousand somber crows. The signs explaining the exhibit were apparently stolen and vandalized by someone who disagreed with what they said (real mature, people). While I wish the IAJ—and all the student groups struggling with this issue—all the best, my first thought (after the crow thing) was that the flags are packed together pretty densely, and the tips are rather…pointy. I had to ask myself whether a student suffering a painful, but undeniably comic, injury in full public view wouldn’t damage the impact of the exhibit.

I’m all in favor of President Skorton’s plan to end the war in Gaza by having college students argue with each other. I’m also a great believer in the power of drunken carousing to bring people together. And I don’t know about you, but when I’m stumbling loaded around the arts quad at 3 am, I’m not really on the lookout for a thousand pointy black flags. I swear it’s just a matter of time before we hear of some horribly ironic accident involving an ill-timed stumble and a perfectly positioned flagpole, and then no one will think I’m insensitive for joking about this—they’ll think the pricks who strewed a bunch of sharp shit right where people walk were the insensitive ones. More dangerous than the flags themselves, which, at least, have relatively dull looking plastic tips (not that my delicate eyeballs could withstand them), is what happens when they break, leaving jagged, splintery wooden stakes sticking out of the ground, business end up.

I have this theory that God is a bored, mean-spirited old man who makes people die ironic deaths just for shits and giggles, so I feel that the surest way to live a long life is to avoid situations where I might die in a way that God would find amusing. For that reason, I never joke about planes crashing, and I stay the hell away from golf courses during thunderstorms. But now, just because I brought it up, I’m probably going to impale my crooked, black little heart on one of those flags, and it’ll serve me right, and God will laugh till it hurts. As the Oracle says in The Matrix: “what’s really going to bake your noodle later on is: would you still have broken it if I hadn’t said anything.” Indeed.

Amendment: props to the IAJ for recovering the vandalized signs, repairing them, and then placing them alongside the flags in this semi-tattered state; it was an elegant protest. Vandals, be ashamed.