Beaufort The suspensions of 35 high school students in this quaint coastal town have made it the new focus of an old issue, the potentially offensive fashion statement made by clothing depicting the Confederate flag.

Outrage over the recent suspensions sparked a protest march to the school district office and a roadside protest near one school where students waved the flag and held signs proclaiming "Heritage, not hate."

"I had no idea in the world anyone would be offended by this," says Brook Armstrong, a 17-year-old Beaufort High student sitting in the great room of her family's home overlooking the marsh and a dock where a Confederate flag snaps in the breeze.

She wears the white T-shirt that got her suspended. On the back, it shows chickens hatching from eggs decorated with the Confederate flag. "Southern chicks, better than the rest," reads the shirt.

To Armstrong, the shirt is part of being a Southern girl.

"If anyone asks, 'Do you know Brook Armstrong?' everyone says the real Southern girl with the country accent," she says. "That's my personality and how everybody knows me."

But such T-shirts were banned at Beaufort High after a student, who has since left school, was wearing a flag shirt and found handing out literature with Confederate emblems to attempt to recruit members for the Aryan Nation, a white supremacist group.

A few days later, school hall monitors headed off a confrontation between the student and two others. The monitors reported more students also seemed to be wearing the flag shirts, Beaufort High principal Bill Evans says.

Under the county school dress code, the administrators may prohibit the wearing of clothing "which may foreseeably disrupt or interfere with the school environment."

About 35 students at Beaufort and nearby Battery Creek High were suspended -- some more than once because they returned to school wearing such shirts, said John Williams, a spokesman for the Beaufort County School District.

One day, about 60 students turned out for a dawn roadside demonstration near the entrance to Beaufort High. A few days later, a group of students and parents marched in protest through downtown to the school district offices.

All the suspensions have since run their course, says Evans, who notes students in the past wore Confederate symbols without incident. But when it became an issue, steps were taken to prohibit them.

"We clearly had a disruptive activity taking place," he says. "It's my major responsibility to provide a healthy and safe atmosphere for students at the school. That's my first priority."

Brook will not be returning to Beaufort High, says her mother, Renee Armstrong.

"I'm going to home-school my kids," she says. "I'm not going to teach my children that they should be ashamed of the South."

What has happened in Beaufort is not unique, but some here say the tension over the issue has escalated since the controversy three years ago about lowering the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House dome.

"The issue of the flag has been out there for many years, but as a minor issue. In many cases, it really began to take off with the flag controversy in South Carolina," says Mark Potok, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

"When the flag came off the State House dome, flag cases increased dramatically," agreed Kirk Lyons, an attorney and director of the Southern Legal Resource Center, which takes on Southern heritage cases.

Lyons says his group has received 300 requests for assistance from people who feel they have been discriminated against in flag issues since August 2000.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that students' free-speech rights don't end at the schoolhouse door, but other courts have ruled that administrators do have the responsibility for safety in schools.

The 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled just last month that a school could prohibit students from displaying the Confederate flag on school grounds.

It noted that words such as "symbol," "heritage," "racism" and "slavery" are highly charged and often associated with discussions of the Confederate flag.

"Real feelings -- strong feelings -- are involved," the court wrote. "It is not only constitutionally allowable for school officials to closely contour the range of expression children are permitted regarding such volatile issues, it is their duty to do so."

But Lyons, who says he will consult with the Armstrongs about possible legal action in Beaufort, calls it "an uninformed and dishonest opinion."

He says students have a right to display Confederate symbols.

"This is not something that is a fad. These kids know it is part of their family," he said. "They may not know who their Confederate ancestors were, but they know they have them. The school does not have the right to take that away from them."