HURRICANE, W.Va. -- One day last week at Hurricane High School, in the part of the parking lot nearest to Teays Valley Road, eight Confederate flags on six pickup trucks waved to passing drivers.
A couple of students have done it for a while, they said, but more started after the Confederate flag was removed from the state capitol in South Carolina this summer,
On Sept. 11, one student decided he had had enough. Police say the student used a box cutter to shred Confederate flags on other students' trucks at a football game. He was suspended from school, and Hurricane Police Chief Mike Mullins said soon after the incident that police would probably file a juvenile petition in circuit court for destruction of property.
"He admitted to doing it and advised that he was offended by the flag," said Mullins, who has not returned recent calls from the Gazette-Mail. The student and his mother would not agree to an interview.
Cody Barker, 19, was waiting this week for his friends to get out of school in the section of the Hurricane High parking lot that he called the "redneck station."
"They all were going to fight him," Barker said of the student who cut up the flag. "They weren't too happy about it."
Some schools ban the Confederate flags on clothes or vehicles, and have attempted to use flag controversies to explain why the flags are divisive and can be viewed as a symbol of hate. More have banned them since June 17, when nine black people were killed in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, by a man who posed with the flag in photos.
The debate holds more significance at Hurricane High, where a decade ago, a federal judge ruled that the school could not ban the Confederate flag. In that case, U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver ended the ban at Hurricane High, in part because the overwhelmingly white school did not have a history of racial tension or violence.
The judge ruled in favor of Frankie Bragg, an 18-year-old senior who regularly wore Confederate flag T-shirts to school. He said he wore them to honor his southern heritage.
Copenhaver wrote that he lifted the school's ban on Confederate flags because the school had not had "flag-based physical violence between students, a pervasive background of demonstrated racial hostility or the involvement of any hate groups aligned on either side of a serious racial divide." Without that racial turmoil, the school did not have the right to trample on Bragg's First Amendment right to express himself freely, he ruled.
Hurricane High's principal at the time, Joyce Vessey Swanson, had fought to keep the ban in place and said she had seen students at other Putnam County schools use the flag to harass black students.
Putnam schools spokeswoman Rudi Raynes said the county doesn't have a policy regarding the Confederate flag, but directed a reporter to the 2005 court decision.
"Basically the ruling in that case was as long as the student was not being disruptive, intimidating anyone or trampling on the civil rights of others, they do have the freedom of speech," she said.
Raynes said she didn't know if students at Hurricane High were currently flying Confederate flags, and she could not comment on student suspensions. Putnam schools Superintendent Chuck Hatfield and Hurricane High Principal Richard Campbell did not return calls from the Gazette-Mail.
Hurricane students who fly the flags said they see the flags as an homage to Confederate heritage. They also said they feel like their free speech is being stifled.
School administrators have made them roll and zip-tie their flags, the students said, but the flags were flying free as traffic went by and students exited the building on Wednesday afternoon.
Although they were quick to say the flags are not meant to send a message about race, the students seemed acutely aware that some people were taking them that way.
Thomas Joyce turn around to show the phrase "Heritage Not Hate" emblazoned on his shirt.
He said the wind must have unrolled his flag, one of which also read "heritage not hate."
Kailey Young rides home with her brother, who usually flies one on his vehicle.
"My stepdad's black," she said. "I would still fly one. We're not doing it against black people at all."
Other students didn't agree. "I think they're terrible and they shouldn't be up because they're offensive," said Andrew O'Dell, a senior. "It's like flying a swastika."
Jamie Lynn Crofts, an attorney for the ACLU of West Virginia, noted that since the 2005 decision, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, has upheld a Confederate flag ban at a public high school in South Carolina. In that case, Hardwick v. Heyward, the court noted examples of racial tension and found that school officials could reasonably predict disruption caused by a student wearing Confederate shirts.
"Although students' expression of their views and opinions is an important part of the educational process and receives some First Amendment protection, the right of students to speak in school is limited by the need for school officials to ensure order, protect the rights of other students, and promote the school's educational mission," the decision read. The 4th Circuit is also the federal appeals court for West Virginia.
Several people upset about the flags at Hurricane High have suggested contacting the ACLU -- not realizing the ACLU actually represented Bragg, the Confederate flag shirt-wearing student, in 2005.
"It's not a Confederate flag issue," Crofts said. "It's a free speech issue."
Hurricane High student Brent Price said he saw the student running near the trucks after slicing the with the box cutter at the football game. The flag on his own truck had been removed from the bed of the truck and tossed to the ground, he said.
He said he saw the student put a shirt on over a tank top, apparently to disguise himself, and Price ran over and lifted up the shirt then told police.
"He hasn't been back (to school)," Price said.
Price was asked why he flies the flag on his truck.
"Because people tell us we can't," he said.
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazette.com, 304-348-5163, Facebook.com/erinbeckwv, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.