Pride Month 2026 at Collins Circle

Happy Pride Month! The city of Albany, New York, USA, flies the progress flag, a version of the pride flag that honors LGBTQ+ people and people of color, at multiple, prominent locations in honor of Pride Month. So does New York State. Why doesn't UAlbany, the State University of New York at Albany, fly any pride flag at Collins Circle, its main entrance, or anywhere else that this alumnus passed by on a long walk across the main campus yesterday?

In a series of brief videos linked below, totaling four minutes among the first three, I document this jarring contrast and the analogous difference in groundskeeping choices between UAlbany's Collins Circle and the city of Albany's Washington Park. The former is dominated by a vast monoculture lawn, where, at great expense, every species but one is destroyed to produce uniformity. Washington Park, which can be understood to honor every decent person of great accomplishment who bore the name Washington, offers gorgeous polyculture lawn. Everywhere you see the standard grass, there's also clover, and in many places you'll find great variety in the plants that combine naturally, and hence harmoniously, to provide ground cover.

Frankly, as an alumnus of UAlbany (PhD, 2020), who was matriculated from 2012 to 2020, I saw the encroachment of neoliberalism as paid marketers gained power, students who came from money increasingly flaunted their wealth, food courts stopped providing free water, the University at Albany School of Business became the showpiece of the university, and everything that might bring bad publicity got swept under the rug, regardless of danger to students who lacked privilege.

In my opinion, UAlbany, like so many other colleges and universities, has evolved toward fascism, drawn along by the MAGA movement, yes, but pushed by the kind of people who, in their hearts, think of MAGA folk as deplorable and love, love, love money for all the good they think it can do. I'd like to remind these people that too much of a good thing, including money, is bad and tell them that we got saddled with MAGA in part as a reaction to their elitism and willingness to discard folk who didn't go to college.

We need, at the very least, to see the progress flag flying over the University at Albany, Its absence speaks volumes. As an alumnus, I insist that it be raised this year and suggest psychotherapy to damp down the herbicidal mania that keeps UAlbany lawns monoculture.

Pride Month at UAlbany: No Pride Flag and Precious Few Wildflowers #pridemonth #ualbany - YouTube