First of all I find it hard to believe that white children in upstate NY have any historical/cultural reason for displaying the confederate battle flag on their person.
Beyond that, do you think the high school's action could have been in response to a recent Stabbing on the Cornell campus with racial overtones and the fallout it caused on campus and within the community?
Rather than trampling on the precious first amendment rights of their pimply faced charges, perhaps the safety minded high school administrators were justifiably responding to recent events taking place at YOUR school?
I'll leave the obvious irony regarding someone so prone to southern regional bias attending such a citidal of Yankeedom for another time.
Cheers.
The school administrators claimed that students had been wearing t-shirts displaying the Confederate flag because of the recent release of Dukes of Hazard... who knows.
The school never pointed to the stabbing incident on campus so I'm not sure. Their ban was not immediately following the incident. Just in my opinion I didn't see the incidents as related, if only because the Cornell community and the rest of Ithaca don't tend to mingle very much. Just because of Cornell's size, and the general ickiness of Ithaca, most students don't even go into Ithaca very often.
Just an interesting fact that Cornell never publicized, because it was too busy blaming the Cornell American for the stabbing incident (somehow making the illogical deduction that the existence of a conservative newspaper on campus must be responsible for a white student stabbing a black guy): the student who stabbed the visiting black student, Nathan P..... (I can't spell his last name for the life of me) was actually a writer for Turn Left, Cornell's liberal newspaper. While rallies were held on campus to protest racism, and the Cornell American was frequently brought up as being the root of the problem, this little fact was never brought up. Hunter Rawlings, Cornell's president, even stated that "The Cornell American is trash and the people who write for it are trashy." This illogical ranting should be expected from liberal academic elites, but I was nonetheless shocked.
Even the actions of liberal writers on campus are blamed on the conservatives.
As far as the irony of me attending "such a citidal [sic] of Yankeedom"... it is definitely unfortunate. However, I believe that, provided one is capable of resisting indoctrination by liberal professors, the value of an Ivy League degree makes it worth it. We can't let Yankees have a monopoly on degrees from our nation's finest universities merely because we want to stay in the safe cocoon of like-minded Southerners (as much as I would like to). Plus, isn't it great to show the world the fallacy of their stereotypes of ignorant, redneck Southerners who are uneducated and only hold their beliefs because they've never been exposed to anything else?
I want my beliefs--as radically conservative as they may seem to those Yankee Ivy Leaguers--to be respected. Granted, most of them will never come to respect my beliefs. But at least they can't accuse me of merely being ignorant. I've listened to the other side, I've listened to the rants of liberal professors, and I've just been smart enough (and raised well enough by Southern parents, bless their hearts!) to know better.