Harvard-Owned Flags Go Missing

Two flags belonging to the University disappeared on Friday night during an event in Adams House that was organized by one of Harvard’s largest international student groups.

During clean-up at the end the Woodbridge Society’s annual event, Fiesta Mondiale, members of the organization discovered that the flags of Australia and Paraguay were missing from the dining hall.

The flags had been on loan to the organization for the evening by the Office of the University Marshal, which arranges the visits of national and international dignitaries to Harvard who are invited by the President or by various schools, departments, or student groups.

Many of the flags owned by the Marshal’s office were given to Harvard by ambassadors, although the Woodbridge Society’s board members said they did not know how Harvard came to possess the two flags in question. The office traditionally lends flags to Woodbridge this event.

“There’s no incentive for us to punish the people who took them,” Woodbridge Society President Rebecca R. Gong ’08 said. “We don’t care about the punishment or who took them or for what reason. We would just like them back.”

Better known as Fiesta, the event is a celebration of international culture, with traditional clothing, food, and music from around the world. It is the group’s main event of the year, as well as its principal means of fundraising.

The incident has left Woodbridge leaders concerned about the cost of replacing University property and using up the funds they raised from the event.

“It’s not just the flags that have gone missing, but it’s potentially our ability to throw events like this in the future,” said Allegra M. Richards ’09, vice president of the organization.

Woodbridge members said they did not know how much the flags cost, but an e-mail sent by members to House open lists said, “It would likely take all of the profits we made at Fiesta to replace [the flags], and would mean Woodbridge couldn’t throw social events like Fiesta in the same way next year.”

But it is not clear whether the group will have to compensate the University for the loss. According to club members, the Marshal’s office has not yet responded to notifications about the incident. The office could not be reached for comment last night.

According to Gong, the stolen flags were hung over the fourth window on the wall opposite the kitchen area, and over the first door on the left side leading to the kitchen area.

None of the five flags—which also represented Israel, South Africa, and the United Nations—used at the event were hard to miss, measuring at least six feet long by 10 feet wide.

Two policemen from the Harvard University Police Department provided security for the event, but did not report any unusual activity to Woodbridge members, Gong said.

Woodbridge Society members said they did not notice the flags were absent until the end of the event, which reached capacity about an hour before it ended at 2 a.m. The next day, board members spoke to Adams House dining hall staff, sent e-mails over open lists, and filed a police report.

The event was open to students at other schools as well, and many students from the United World Colleges, an organization of 10 international schools, attended.

—Staff writer Victoria B. Kabak can be reached at vkabak@fas.harvard.edu.