LAPEL, Ind. – Officials at Indiana’s Lapel High School outlawed the Confederate flag last week after students repeatedly came to school with the flag flying from their vehicles, and clothes emblazoned with the symbol of southern heritage.

Principal Chad Kemerly told The Indianapolis Star that about two dozen students came to school on Aug. 30 wearing Confederate flag clothing, arriving by caravan with the rebel battle flag flying from their vehicles.

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“We sat down and spoke to each student one-on-one and discussed the situation and what their intentions were,” he said. “They said they were trying to support the southern heritage of the flag and not people’s opinion of what the flag may stand for.

“We talked about the southern heritage, and that for many people, that flag stands for racism,” Kemerly said. “We emphasized they need to know what the message (is) they’re sending.”

Kemerly said students were not punished or asked to change their clothes, but “people were upset.”

The next day, students returned to school in the same fashion, prompting more than 75 students to file complaints with administrators, according to The Indy Channel.

The news site reports the student Confederate flag display is an annual tradition at the school, but the violent events in Charlottesville last month convinced some students to counter their classmates with plans to wear Black Lives Matter clothes to school.

School officials then banned both the Confederate flag and Black Lives Matter attire effective Sept. 1.

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“They’ve had these flags every year,” said student Elliotte Burton, one of about 25 students who planned to wear the Black Lives Matter shirts. “They would just take them down, but now that the situation has been brought up that the kids were going to do the black lives matter shirts, they’ll literally ride around the school with them flying and they’ll leave the parking lot and drive around this whole town with them.”

Lapel is a community about 25 miles northeast of Indianapolis with a high school student body of about 450 students, eight of which are black, according to Fox 59.

The town of roughly 2,400 reported exactly zero African-American citizens during the 2010 census, the Indy Star reports.

Kemerly said the second day of students’ Confederate display “caused a disruption,” though “there was nothing physical.”

“We weren’t able to carry on some classes as usual,” he told the Star. “There were discussions in the hallways taking place that shouldn’t have been taking place.”

“The substantial disruption caused us to prohibit the symbol,” Kemerly said.

Senior Peyton Bannon told The Indy Channel his decision to fly the Confederate flag was centered entirely on honoring those who fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run, a brutal battle that resulted in a stunning Confederate victory over the Union Army of Virginia.

“I’m for what they believe in,” Bannon said. “They seceded from the north for tax reasons and they just didn’t want to be pushed around anymore so they left.”

“Not one bit of it was meant to be racist and I do feel bad for them letting myself portray it like that because that’s not what it was meant for,” he said. “I was very disappointed in my community because it wasn’t an act of racism, it was an act of honor.”

District officials issued a prepared statement that cited a 1986 Supreme Court decision by Chief Justice Burger that states “the undoubted freedom to advocate unpopular and controversial views in schools and classrooms must be balanced against the society’s countervailing interest in teaching students the boundaries of socially appropriate behavior.”

“Therefore in this particular instance our administration stopped this small number of students from exercising their First Amendment rights upon school property, because the students exercise of the right of free speech and free expression were outweighed by the reasonable likelihood that the continued exercise of such rights would undermine the learning atmosphere at Lapel High School,” officials wrote.

The ban in Lapel follows a similar ban instituted by officials at Indiana’s Bloomington High School last October after students there donned the Confederate flag draped over their shoulders, the Star reports.