Students Fly Confederate Flag in Retaliation to Pride Flags at School

When several students at West Plains High School in Missouri started handing out pride flags to friends at school, they never expected their anti-gay classmates to retaliate by raising a Confederate flag banner in the cafeteria.

Who would? That makes no sense. But it’s exactly what happened.

Rose Schilmoeller told local KY3 that she and others passed out around 60 small rainbow flags at school last Monday.

“People would put them like sticking out of backpacks or just carry them around,” she said, calling it “a good way to show people that they’re not alone.”

But a few boys got angry over the brazen display of support for queer people, and raised up the Confederate flag during lunch the next day.

High School Students Protest Pride Flags by Flying Confederate Flag in Cafeteria



Trumpworld: https://t.co/zAtsiXq1V6 pic.twitter.com/39BkMrZK0n — Dane B. McFadhen (@DaneMcFadhen) December 17, 2019

“To us it was just like retaliation to people who were holding their own [pride] flags,” said Taylor Pool, another student who had been passing out flags. “The worst part is that others were backing them up.”

The flag was ultimately confiscated by an administrator after it caused somewhat of a standoff between students. Though Pool reported that there were teens backing up the bizarre retaliation by way of the Confederate flag, she also said there were kids from all walks of life “standing up for us because they also didn’t believe in all the hate other people were giving us.”

The assistant superintendent of the school district, Luke Boyer, told BuzzFeed News that the situation had “been blown way out of proportion” and some reports or rumors about what had happened were not true, though he declined to clarify what those are.

The school district has said no students will be punished and that they instead hope to “teach our students to respect each other and to respect different viewpoints on a variety of social issues.” It is unclear how they plan to do this without taking a stance that a flag representing slavery and the general idea of retaliating against queer people are both wrong.