Rebel flag raised over school

www.sptimes.com/ ^ | February 6, 2004 | REBECCA CATALANELLO and STEVE THOMPSON

[stainlessbanner]

HUDSON - Every school day Hudson High students arrive to find Old Glory flying over the campus.

On Wednesday, though, there was something else.

"My stomach just dropped," 17-year-old Melissa Foster said Thursday."I got the instant sick feeling of who would do this and why?"

Flying over the school was a Confederate flag with the words "I ain't coming down" printed across it. It fluttered over the campus from the darkened morning hours until the first half-hour classes, its halyard cut so that it couldn't be lowered.

Some students, offended by the symbol they equate with racism, spent the morning trying to find out who was responsible.

Emotions escalated. Rumors spread.

By lunch, an assistant principal had to step between an angry 15-year-old black girl and an argumentative white boy who principal Greg Wright said used profanity and racial slurs in answer to her questions of who had raised the flag.

The boy was suspended.

The girl was arrested - she's accused of storming away from the conversation and ramming her shoulder into a school employee. She's facing a battery charge as a result.

"We can't allow this kind of thing," Wright recalled telling students as he went on closed-circuit television between lunch periods.

He knew he had to bring things under control. He called on students to tell the administration everything they knew about what had happened.

Before the end of the day, four white students had been suspended for the flag-raising - two sophomores, one freshman and a Hudson Middle School eighth-grader. School officials are seeking expulsion, at least against the high schoolers, for obstruction of school property and disrupting the school environment.

One of the four, a 16-year-old boy, also was arrested and charged with criminal mischief. Sheriff's deputies said he'd raised the flag the night before and cut the flagpole rope.

By Thursday, Confederate flags were banned from the school's dress code.

"Acts of racism and prejudice are counterproductive to any society and will not be tolerated at school," Wright wrote in a letter he sent to parents.
A year of tension

Wednesday marked a climax to what some students and officials said has been a school year of escalating racial tensions.

In a September surprise, a black student was suspended after administrators said he circulated a self-authored letter that contained violent threats against blacks. And the week before Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Hudson High officials were investigating claims of repeated racial slurs against some in the school's minority population.

"You feel like you're unwelcome in a school," said 15-year-old Fredrick Quijano, one of a handful of black students at Hudson High. "When I go to school, I treat white people the way I treat anyone else."

Of the 1,592 students enrolled at Hudson, minorities account for less than 7 percent and blacks only number 16, according to district figures.

Wright said the minority population is growing and the school, which has struggled with race relations in the past, must embrace the change.

But Rebecca Doolen, a white 14-year-old, and her mother, Toni Lemieux, remained defiant.

Doolen said she and her friends agreed to wear their Confederate garb on Thursday in reaction to the incident. And, Doolen said, she'll do it again today, despite warnings from administrators that she could be sent home for it.

"It's heritage, not hate," Doolen said. "If they don't like it, they'll have to get over it."

Superintendent John Long said the district takes an unassuming approach to the dress code as it concerns Confederate flags. As long as it doesn't seem to be disrupting the school environment, they are allowed.

Things have gone overboard at Hudson, though.

"We're not casting any dispersions on anyone's heritage," Long said. "But I don't recall, at least in my years here, the Confederate flag reaching this kind of fever pitch before."

Lemieux, who runs The Big Redneck Shop in Hudson, applauded the flag raising as "kind of cool" and said she regretted not having taken a photo of it so that she could have sent it to the National Alliance - a group the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies as a hate group.

Within 30 minutes of stepping off a plane from Philadelphia on Thursday evening, St. Petersburg NAACP president Darryl Rouson got two phone calls about the incident.

He called on parents, administrators and other adults to "really drive home sensitivity, cultural tolerance, social understanding" in the community, pointing out that these behaviors are learned.

Soon after leaving school Thursday, 18-year-old Richard Ward summed up the incident as "just a few students who did an ignorant thing."

"Wow, the confederate flag," he said. "Wow, they put it up there. Whoop-de-do."

Ward is one of only a handful of black seniors at the school.

"Every year more and more minorities are coming to our high school, but some people don't want to change," he said. "They're going to have to."

[H.Akston]

Some people just can't stand the 10th Amendment.

[Taft in '52]

Advance the flag of Dixie! Hurrah! Hurrah!
For Dixie's land, we'll take our stand
To live and die in Dixie.
To arms! To arms and conquer peace for Dixie!
To arms! To arms and conquer peace for Dixie!

[solitas]

..."We're not casting any dispersions on anyone's heritage," [Superintendent ] Long said....

ASPERSIONS.

[Arkinsaw]

This isn't the way to honor the Confederate soldier or his symbols. Now the Confederate flag is banned from another school and the lawyers have one more incident to put in front of courts and the press has another incident to tie the Confederate flag to something other than the Confederate soldier. Sigh.

I would rather that the kid who did this go to a memorial service or write a paper about General Lee.

[CARDINALRULES]

Ping.

[SouthernFreebird]

Your right...in this instance the flag was used, not respected.

[stainlessbanner]

Agreed. The school is coming down hard on their behavior.

[Blood of Tyrants]

And even fewer people can stand the fact that the First applies to politically incorrect speech as well.

[usadave]

Some students, offended by the symbol they equate with racism, spent the morning trying to find out who was responsible.

Maybe if they'd quit equating the Confederate flag with racism, they wouldn't get so upset when they see it.

[m18436572]

"You feel like you're unwelcome in a school," said 15-year-old Fredrick Quijano, one of a handful of black students at Hudson High. "When I go to school, I treat white people the way I treat anyone else."

Thanks, We're glad you're treating whites like you treat everyone else. Did'nt know it was really an issue till you brought it up.
Thanks.

Regardless, it's probably that you treat everyone like crap, that you have so many problems dealing with interpersonal relationships. Perhaps only your homies prefer, and will tolerate, the way you act.

Crybaby!

[dljordan]

The horror!

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

He called on parents, administrators and other adults to "really drive home sensitivity, cultural tolerance, social understanding" in the communi

Cultural tolerance? Hmmm... I guess that doesn't include anyone's culture but his...

[RebelBanker]

Exactly! The Maryland Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has had some very heated discussions about "proper" displays of the Battle Flag. Many of us feel that it is quite often misused as a symbol of something other than the Confederate soldier and that we should discourage such displays. Some others will pretty much automatically defend anyone who displays the Battle Flag anywhere.

[NewRomeTacitus]

"It's heritage, not hate," Doolen said. "If they don't like it, they'll have to get over it."

Proof again that decades of liberal indoctrination from the education establishment has failed. That hurts the old hippies/secular humanists more than anything. Hooray!

[BJungNan]

I always wonder what two teenager friends, one black and one white go through with the both of them knowing that the black student will have a much easier time getting into college than will the white one.

As friends and in the same school, they will come from equal backgrounds, live in the same neighborhood, fathers, mothers will have equal or similar income. Must be an odd relationship that develops over it.

Or maybe they just learn to rally around different flags.

[Afro_conservative]

Man I just came on this forum(as I was referred to it from the CR on my campus) and I am a conservative at heart but come on guys what if someone brought a nazi-flag which does represent a heritage, a hateful one at that. I see here people tend to be so caught up in hating the other side that they don't even see what is happening. These kids(i.e. the kids who hung the flag up) were not using the flag as heritage, but as a message, a hateful message to stir up trouble. If they wanted to hang the flag why didn't they just ask the principal or write a paper or do a presentation on it to the class. Also I note that a lot of you say you want blacks to vote republican and to take on a more conservative manner in everyday life, well how do you expect that to be if you dismiss everything blacks say about racism as either garbage and/or stupid PC crap. The confederate flag does represent a lot of hateful messages no matter if you want to believe it or not(hint: that is why when you see people who wear little white hoods on TV they usually have a Nazi flag and/or memorabilia and guess what, a confederate flag(and no those aren't liberals impersonating Klansmen.) So next time someone says "Gee why don't those blacks vote Republican they are so stupid," think well a lot of Republicans are trying to not only look away but protect the very people who believe in the confederacy and with it slavery and yes I know my history and I know the north was and is still very segregated but it doesn't dismiss the fact that a lot of bigots and racists hide their beliefs so they don't get hounded in society by calling themselves conservative when they aren't. Oh and by the way if you can't read my name, I am a Christian Conservative in that order, and Christ wouldn't tolerate this!

[Afro_conservative]

It seems as though some people on this forum are kind of hypocrites. The southern states (i.e. the confederacy) split from what was the USA, thus giving up their rights and privileges in the senate and congress. By attacking them to take the land and govern them, the USA was then attacking not it brethren but another entity and enemy. Therefore all those men who fought for the south were and still are enemy combatants. At best they can be called traitors and deserve the death they so surely received. Hail to the North, the Republican North I might add.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Cute try, but it won't work Troll.

[stainlessbanner]

Afro_conservative
Since Feb 7, 2004