BRITISH COLUMBIA - When Nanaimo high school student Aaron Mishkin appeared for classes Thursday, he heard his classmates talking about "kick-a-ginger day."

It was the first the 13-year-old redhead had heard about the online phenomenon, and initially he thought nothing of it.

"But then I left the class, and we have seven minutes to get to the next class, and I was amazed by the amount of people that kicked me along the way," said Mishkin.

Over the course of the day, Mishkin figures he was kicked or hit about 80 times, all because of a Facebook group, apparently inspired by an episode of the satirical cartoon South Park that urged members to "kick a ginger" on Nov. 20.

In Sooke, west of Victoria, more than 20 students at Journey Middle School were suspended after shocked teachers received complaints they were kicking redheads.

School district official Jim Cambridge said the problem started with a few students and then others joined in.

"They came to school with the idea it would be a fun thing to do, more as a prank than anything else. They started looking for redheaded students and kicking them in the shins, then other students thought it looked like fun and it grew rather rapidly," he said.

For Mishkin, the worst came when the bell rang, and he was in a crowd of kids leaving school.

"Three people saw me and they decided they would kick me. They were much older than me, maybe like 15, 16 years old," he said. "I became trapped trying to get through this press of people. And that's when they kicked me from behind and I fell over."

Mishkin stayed home from school on Friday. His legs were bruised, but his faith in his peers took an even harder hit.

"I was amazed by the lack of compassion in the people that I knew and the fact they would think that this is a fun thing to do," he said. "I just never thought that people were capable of that before."

Katie Marshall, 15, a student at New Westminster secondary, was also victimized Thursday.

"[I] was just walking down the halls and then a bunch of random people started kicking me and I had no idea why they were kicking me," Marshall said.

"I started running away and then suddenly one of them said something like 'Oh, I'm going to kick you. You have no soul, so you probably can't feel pain either.'"

The comment was likely a reference to a South Park episode called Ginger Kids in which one character says redheads are soulless and inherently evil.

"This whole 'kick a ginger' thing [is just] so out of hand," Marshall said. "My legs are still sore from people kicking me."

On the Facebook group, many posters claimed to have acted on the group's premise. Others deplored the page as a hate site or defended it as a joke.

A 14-year-old Courtenay teen, who was listed Thursday as the group's administrator told The Sun the site was just a joke and apologized for offending people.

But police, educators and experts said it's no laughing matter. Comox Valley RCMP were investigating the group, saying it potentially involved hate crime.

Prince George school board chairwoman Lyn Hall said one high-schooler was left with welts on his legs after being kicked Thursday. The school was considering suspending those responsible.

Cyber-bullying expert Karen Brown said the Facebook group was a serious concern.

"I'm just absolutely appalled," said Brown, who is a sessional professor and PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University.

"It's really unprecedented," she said, explaining that it's common to see smaller groups making fun of a specific teacher or student. But this phenomenon was different, she said, since it was international in scope and advocated violence.

"This is inciting hate," she said. "This is tantamount to almost a hate website."

She said the group should be immediately shut down - by Facebook itself if necessary - and police and parents should deal with the creators.

crolfsen@vancouversun.com