High school student suspended for wearing Confederate flag attire

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A student at Fayetteville High School in Fayetteville, Ark., has been suspended for wearing — and refusing to remove — a Confederate flag-themed shirt and face paint in support of a pro-flag movement called #HistoryNotHate.

Several students showed up to school in apparel featuring the controversial flag and were told by the administration to remove it, but one did not comply and received an out-of-school suspension, according to local NBC affiliate KARK. Now the teens say they are upset with the way school officials are handling the situation, and they defend their right to dress in Confederate flag themes.

“None of us are racist. None of us are doing it for hate,” said student Jagger Starnes to KARK. “It’s Southern pride, and we’re not gonna take it off for anyone. This is our flag. It’s Arkansas. This is the South.”

But school officials say they aren’t taking a political stance and are not trying to impede anyone’s rights as an American. Instead, they’re trying to keep the peace, they say. “We’re not trying to trample on their First Amendment rights,” Fayetteville High School Principal Jay Dostal told KARK. “We’re just trying to have a safe and orderly school environment.”

But one teen believed that the confrontation between students and authorities got heated. Fayetteville High School student Morrigan White told local news station KNWA that he painted the Confederate flag all over his peers’ hands and faces, “wherever they wanted it,” and that during their lunch period, they were approached by police, the principal, the vice principal as well as school deans, “and they were all telling us we either had to wash it off or go home.”

But the students refused, and Starnes was the one to speak up. “I told him I wasn’t going to take it off,” he said to KNWA. “So then I went to the office, had a discussion and then the head principal ended up calling me racist,” he says.

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