SAN JOSE — In the first public response from the former San Jose State University freshmen facing hate crime charges over a series of racially tinged pranks on a black suitemate, one of the expelled students testified Tuesday that he didn’t consider the repeated display of a Confederate flag in their dormitory to be an insensitive symbol of racial supremacy or slavery.

When his lawyer asked what he thought of the controversial flag, Logan Beaschler, 20, called it “just a symbol of small government, conservatism.”

Beaschler and two other former SJSU students, Colin Warren and Joseph “Bret” Bomgardner, face misdemeanor battery and hate crime charges. A fourth student in the case was 17 at the time and was charged as a juvenile offender.

Beaschler’s testimony in Santa Clara County Superior Court echoed the strategy of the defendants’ attorneys, who wish to convince the jury that Donald “D.J.” Williams, the African-American student, was a victim of routine college pranks and not intentional racist acts.

The jury of six men and six women appeared to be ethnically mixed but without an African-American juror.

Chuck Mesirow, Beaschler’s lawyer, played up Beaschler’s exposure to everyday Confederate symbols encountered in conservative, agricultural Bakersfield, where the young man grew up. Lawyers for the three former students had described their conduct as merely part of a “prank war gone too far,” and Mesirow had told the jury that Beaschler has an “edgy, dark sense of humor,” describing his behavior as “childish, immature and insensitive, but not racist.”

When Mesirow asked Beaschler on Tuesday if he thought the Confederate flag would offend Williams, the former student said, “I didn’t even think of that.”

Prosecutor Carolyn Malinsky cross-examined Beaschler during the afternoon. She has sought to establish a pattern of abuse targeting Williams, the only black student in the eight-man dormitory suite in the fall 2013 semester. In addition to the flag incident at the dormitory tower, Beaschler admitted that he also participated in the collaring of Williams with a bicycle U-lock, but he said it was not racially motivated.

However, Malinsky pressed him on a second attempt with the two other defendants to collar Williams with the same lock after they had chased and held him down.

She asked him, “At some time you realized D.J. Williams was being targeted, right?”

Beaschler answered, “I would say targeting is not the right word, but yes.”

Other indignities for Williams included coming home to find a large Confederate flag tacked to the dorm’s living room wall and, later, a racial slur written on a whiteboard. The flag was taken down when Williams objected, but later reappeared draped around a cardboard cutout meant to resemble the late daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel.

Williams testified earlier in the trial that the various harassment left him feeling demeaned and demoralized.

“Being African-American,” he said, “it felt like I was being ridiculed, like my culture was being made fun of.”

The trial is expected to continue this week.

Contact Joe Rodriguez at jrodriguez@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5767. Twitter.com/JoeRodMercury.