School administrators earlier this month asked a woman to leave a Texas high school football game after she refused to cover up her t-shirt, which bore an image of a Ku Klux Klan member alongside the words “Fetch the rope.”

Officials in Quinlan, Texas, said the woman was attending a Sept. 8 football game at Hobart Lytal Memorial stadium when several members of the crowd made school administration aware of her t-shirt. Officials called the t-shirt “offensive, portraying violence, and threatening.”

When the woman refused to turn the shirt inside out to obscure the image, school administrators asked her to leave the stadium. Officials say she left willingly. 

Members of the community addressed the incident this week at a Board of Trustees meeting.

“I believe in freedom of speech, but we were at a school event where there are rules,” he said. “The reality is that people are gonna do and like whatever they want to, but when we are representing something greater than ourselves, we need to step up to the curb.” 

School board president Kenny Stone echoed much of the same view on the issue.

“We are about being a campus that looks after our children and we’re about giving good influence,” Stone said. “That’s what we want to do … to give good influence.”

Hairgrove writes for the Greenville, Texas, Herald Banner.