An eighth grade student from Ohio was just suspended from school for including a nerf gun in a memorial he made for veterans.

Tyler Carlin of Celina Middle School decided to recreate the “battle cross” monument to honor military veterans who have given their lives for their country. His monument included a helmet, a boot, and a nerf gun, which is what ended up getting him suspended. The school principal decided to suspend Tyler because he was “bringing a look-alike weapon to school and creating a disturbance,” according to The Todd Starnes Show.

“This means so much to me because that was the last chance that… the military, their friends got to say goodby to them and then they had to go back out and fight. Also, my dad’s friend is like a grandpa to me. And he, like, showed me his war stories from Vietnam… he just showed me all about that.”

Tyler tried to have the school back down over the suspension and expunge it from his record, but they refused.

“The community is standing behind me on this,” Tyler said. “They held a protest and it is still going on today.”

“After he had started serving the suspension and we had some time to look into this, we said ‘this is ridiculous, can you make the suspension go away and apologize to Tyler for what you did and we’ll make this all go away’ and they refused to do that,” his attorney Travis Faber added. “We’re going to do whatever we have to, to make this right.”

Find out more about this in the video below.