A high school senior in Indiana said school officials told him to take down an American flag he had on his pickup truck, but he refused to comply.
Cameron Blasek, who attends East Central High School in St. Leon, Indiana, said he read through the school handbook but did not find any rules saying he could not display the flag in such a way, Fox News reported Monday.
Blasek said the school told him it had the right to request he take the flag down.
“I said, ‘The school does have a right to request that, but since it’s just a request, a request means that you’re not demanding or telling me that I have to. So I’m going to decline your request,'” the young man explained, according to Local 12.
Once his story got out amongst community members, others began showing up at the campus with American flags flying on their own vehicles.
“I’m pretty proud of him. He stood his ground and stood up for what he believed in,” Blasek’s father, Christopher Blasek, said:
Cameron Blasek was told by East Central High School (@EastCentralHS) to remove the American flag from his truck.
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 10, 2024
The next day dozens of students showed up with American flags on their cars to stand with him!
MAKE THIS HERO GO VIRAL! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/GNt8wkwBqr
In a message to parents on Friday, Principal Tom Black said the school was allowing students to display the American Flag in the parking lot, adding that no school employees had “stated or insinuated that the flag was offensive” and they had never received a complaint about it.
Meanwhile, Black told Fox the school has long had a rule that no flag was allowed on cars in the parking lot area, but that the rule was not about the American flag.
Black explained the flag rule was to help with safety regarding visibility when hundreds of teenagers were driving out of the area during dismissal.
The school has since said it permitted the “US Flag while still having the authority to restrict other flags that are deemed inappropriate for school.”
Black said he met with many of the students on Friday to share the news they would be allowed to display the American flag as long as they adhered to the United States Flag Code.
“This was before the original social media post. The inaccurate narrative is that we changed our mind due to social media backlash. That is not true, as the timeline reveals,” he concluded, adding leadership was sorry for the confusion regarding the issue.
According to Local 12, Blasek plans to join the military after graduation.
The young man said the American flag represents our beautiful nation.
“It also represents the people who died for it and fought for it. And I think that’s a really hard thing to talk about, but I think it’s a big thing,” he commented.
On what appears to be his Facebook page, Blasek has lots of photos of himself with his pickup truck.
