Dear Bay City Western High School,

I know you are getting a lot of attention from the news right now and I know that it is a lot of negative attention. However, you deserve it. Your students are flying the Confederate flag and the administration is not doing anything about it. I'm sorry but that should not be happening!

Do you not have a U.S. History class that your students have to take? If you did they wouldn't think that it was okay to fly the Confederate flag on the back of their trucks.

Sure this flag is part of the history of our country but it isn't flown anymore for a very good reason! This flag represents slavery and racism. This flag has caused a lot of issues in our country in recent years and the administration of your school should be doing something about this. Under no circumstances should any student who goes to your school or any school in this country feel like they are not safe or are unwanted in the school.

Your students have said things like they are flying this flag as "a country thing" or that "it looks cool in the mirror." I'm sorry but that to me just says that you are not teaching your students what the real symbolism of this flag is.

When I was in high school we had students that flew the Confederate flag on the back of their trucks but the administration of my high school did something about it. It wasn't the thing that I or several others wanted to have happen but it was something. So I will tell you what my school did to combat this issue. For us when this started to become such a big issue the administration told every single person that had a Confederate flag on their truck that it had to be taken down when they pulled into and got parked in the student lot.

What did that really mean? It meant that the students that flew these flags took the flags down off the bed of the trucks or out of whatever window it was in and either laid them in the bed of their trucks or put them on the seat of their trucks. Students who did not take the flag down once in the parking lot for a first offense got detention. After enough offenses, they got suspended.

I urge you to take action on this because if you don't you will be sending a message to your African American students that you may not mean to be sending to them. But mean it or not the message you will be sending this population of your school is that you don't want them in your school.

Trust me on this.

From a girl who already lived this in her own high school four years ago.