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There was a rule at my old high school that bans the wearing of any occult items, which always made me mad. I wrote an article for the school newspaper protesting this and I got a lot of support for my arguement.
It just makes me mad because I know that the people who are making these rules don't know anything about Paganism or the Occult at all. Thier afraid of what they don't understand and so they try to get rid of it.

I never had a problem with religious symbols, but then I didn't really get hardcore into any specific Pagan religion until my last year in high school. Personally, I was threatened with expulsion but it was because I didn't have the habit of addressing everyone as "sir" or "ma'am." My parents were both from the North, which has much less of the bootcamp atmosphere compared to the South.

Even though I was a witch in the Deep South, though- in the crotch of the Bible Belt- I didn't really have any problems because the community knew me. They knew that I was an intelligent, good kid, I didn't look freaky (other than the pentagram), and I was very active in voluntary community service. They didn't have any grounds for complaint. Some bible-thumper Christians- the kind who stand around in the middle of campus and shout at the passers-by, and the occasional street preacher- would engage me in verbal dispute/badgering, but I always responded to their plight with sympathy (pity, probably is closer to the truth- it's a tremendous guilt-trip which those people place on themselves, being personally responsible for all the "unsaved" victims out there), and polite smiles, or simply ignored them.

Once I became Kemetic, though, and started wearing a small gold ankh rather than the pewter pentagram, that cleared up as well. Even during the time when I wore them together, and simply hung the ankh out in front, I found that the ankh was distracting enough that many would not see the pentagram underneath. Most Christians can't tell the difference between an ankh and a cross anyway- even a few of my old Pagan acquaintances did a double take when I first started wearing it, LOL! ^_~ And my ankh was small- probably less than an inch long. But when you think about it, most Pagan jewelry for some odd reason is a cool toned metal, like silver or pewter. The simple fact that mine was gold probably fooled many into thinking it was just a pretty shape- or a fancy cross. Wanting a gold ankh specifically, I searched the Pagan venders through and through trying to find one- I eventually ended up going to mainstream jewelers, and found a few very lovely ankhs in their catalogues. Lumped right in there with the crosses and the crucifixes, lol. When I lived down in Alabama, I called my ankh my "Pagan camoflauge."