Boys booted from high school campus for wearing American flag shirts, bandannas

By Mike Morris

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Five California high school students were kicked off their campus Wednesday for wearing t-shirts and bandannas emblazoned with American flags on Cinco de Mayo, a San Francisco television station reported.

The boys are students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, a town southeast of San Jose, according to KNTV-TV.

One of the boys, Daniel Galli, told the station that he and four friends were sitting at a table eating brunch when a vice principal told two of them to remove American flag bandannas from around their heads, and the other three to turn their American flag t-shirts inside out. They refused to do so and were sent to the principal's office.

"They said we could wear it on any other day, but today is sensitive to Mexican-Americans because it's supposed to be their holiday so we were not allowed to wear it today," Galli told KNTV. The school has a large number of Mexican-American students, the NBC affiliate reported.

According to another of the boys, school administrators told them that if they went back to class wearing the shirts, they would be suspended for defiance. The boys went home to avoid suspension.

"I think it's absolutely ridiculous," Julie Fagerstrom, one of the boys' mother, said. "All they were doing was displaying their patriotic nature. They're expressing their individuality."

The TV station reported Thursday that the five boys and their parents met with officials from the Morgan Hill Unified School District Wednesday night, and the district officials released a statement saying they do not agree with the way school administrators handled the incident.

The boys were told they could return to school on Thursday, wearing the red, white and blue.