Four students at a New York high school were suspended for a number of racially-motivated incidents on school grounds and on social media, FoxNews.com reported.
The first incident at St. Anthony's High School in South Huntington occurred when two male students draped themselves in a confederate flag. The school's principal, Brother Gary Cregan, told WCBS-TV the boys arrived at an after-school game with it.
"The African-American students who immediately saw it really exercised heroic restraint and fortunately a teacher immediately confiscated the flag and took the students out of the gym," Cregan said.
Though Cregan initially suspended the students for 10 days, he determined on Tuesday that they will not be allowed back.
He also sent a letter home to their parents, claiming the flag is "designed to revive past injustices or to inflame discrimination or racial intolerance" and "is completely unacceptable and profoundly offensive...As a Catholic and Franciscan school, Saint Anthony's will always demand acceptance and respect for all races, religions and cultures
"I find it just very hard to even imagine why any student in 2014 would even consider or think that a Confederate flag would be anything other than a symbol of hate," Cregan said.
Though St. Anthony's is a private Catholic school, the principal said the free speech of the students remains limited.
"I certainly think this particular symbol of hate falls in the category of something that should be excised from our culture," he said.
One week after the flag incident happened, Gothamist reported that two female students were suspended after one wore blackface and the other used racist language on social media.
Cregan decided to expel all students involved because of the uncomfortable mood that remains at the school.
"I had hoped, perhaps naively, that we would be able at a given point to reasonably sit down, but the emotions are still very high. You can feel the mood in the building. The mood is not a pleasant mood. It's a tense mood," he told Newsday.
