BUNKER Hill, Ind. – Four Indiana elementary students face expulsion after school officials allege the 10- and 11-year-olds started a gang at Maconaquah Elementary School.

Four fifth-graders are suspended and facing possible expulsion for the rest of the school year after a student fight tipped officials off to a budding gang, and further investigation revealed some students were taking their gang affiliation pretty seriously, Fox 59 reports.

“Part of the fight was about somebody being in a gang,” Maconaquah superintendent Doug Arnold told the news site.

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“What we saw was, there were a few students who said, this is our gang. This is our symbol. Another one said, I want to be a part of that gang. The other one said no,” he said.

Arnold said school officials tracked down four students who started the gang, and are investigating to determine if others were involved. Some of the youth created a gang symbol and scratched it into their skin, he said.

“My understanding is one of the students scratched themselves with this symbol and might have used a small blade they took from a pencil sharpener,” Arnold told Fox 59. “One of the students had a Band-Aid covering it and when the administrator approached the student it had been scratched on the arm.”

The situation is unusual for the small town of 1,000, UPI.com reports.

“Fifth-graders, you don’t expect to see this,” Arnold told Fox 59. “We know there are some kids having a hard time fitting in. One way to do that is to say, you know, ‘You two or three guys, we are all together. This is one group. You other kids aren’t a part of it.”

Arnold said Bunker Hill’s principal sent a letter home to parents about the gang activity, and he plans to recommend expulsion for the students involved, though only though the end of the current school year.

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“We have board policy that prohibits any kind of gang-like activity. We’re not going to tolerate it. When we discovered it, it was dealt with immediately. It was dealt with seriously,” Arnold said. “We’re going to investigate to make sure that there’s nothing else involved. And if there is, it will be dealt with in a similar fashion.”

Arnold told the Kokomo Tribune officials do not believe the students were members of an official gang, but rather created one themselves. Regardless, some students could face criminal charges, he said.

“They were talking about something they don’t know anything about,” he said. “We do not tolerate any of this kind of activity, even if it is innocent and naïve fifth graders. This is a safe place to go to school.”

Parents, of course, were stunned by the news.

“I was shocked. I expect to hear that from middle and high school, but from elementary, I was shocked,” parent Lisa Wilson told Fox 59.

“Seriously? Fifth graders!” Kenneth White posted to the Tribune site. “If they really wanted a branding, I am pretty sure a wooden spoon across their backsides then times would have taken care of it, and those marks eventually go away.

“Not that I am a fan of corporal punishment as a deterrent, but dammit!”