LINCOLN, Neb. – Officials at Lincoln Public Schools’ Career Academy banned welding students from flying American flags on their vehicles after a college student removed one from a holder they made as a class project to honor veterans.

Academy director Dan Hohensee told the Lincoln Journal Star officials are worried that the American flags welding students had flown from their trucks since Veterans Day may be divisive and disrupt the learning environment, so they banned Old Glory.

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“The directive prohibiting displaying the flags in the school’s parking lot was prompted by an incident on Friday, when a Southeast Community College student removed one of the flags from a holder and put it in the bed of a pickup next to the vehicle flying the flag,” according to the news site.

The ban is not in effect for all students at the college or adjacent Career Academy, however, only the seven or eight welding students who built flag holders to honor veterans on Veterans Day. Those students received permission and encouragement from Career Academy officials to fly the flags just days prior.

Regardless, Hohensee is concerned the students’ American spirit and patriotism might offend some people, so he banned the flags “out of an abundance of caution.” He said he’ll allow small flags or bumper or window stickers, and may consider allowing the welding students to fly their flags again, some day, the Journal Star reports.

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Hohensee tried to explain why the divisive election means he must now differentiate between small harmless American flags and big American flags that might offend local Latinos.

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“It evokes an emotional response from both ends of the spectrum,” he said, adding that campus security is tracking down the person who removed the flag on Friday through surveillance footage, but officials did not alert the real police.

Apparently the situation did not sit well with locals.

Lincoln Public Schools Superintendent Steve Joel held a press conference on Thursday to apologize to the public, the Journal Star reports.

“Hindsight would suggest that this could have been handled in a different way,” Joel said. “We respect the rights of students to display their flags. We should not have asked our students to remove them. We believe that decision was in error and we believe this could easily and understandably have been misinterpreted as infringing on the rights of freedom of expression and speech.”

Joel said he heard from a lot of students and taxpayers about the incident, and wanted to make it explicitly clear that students can fly flags on campus at any time.

“Lincoln Public Schools believes in the teaching of the constitution and all that it represents,” he said. “Patriotism is an important part of the learning experience.”