SALEM (AP) — Chemawa Indian School students are protesting a federal decision to surround their school with an 8-foot-high fence topped with razor wire.

"Chemawa means happy home,'' student Jeremy Cummings said. "It doesn't make a happy home with a fence around it.''

The Bureau of Indian Affairs ordered and paid for the $63,000 fence, which is intended to protect students at the federal boarding school from unwanted visitors, Supervisor Larry Byers said.

But school board members who held their quarterly meeting on campus this week were shocked to see crews digging post holes near the school buildings. Federal officials apparently did not ask or inform the board about the fence.

"They're not fencing the problems out. They're destroying the morale of the students by fencing them in,'' said board member David Harding, a tribal judge on the Coeur d'Alene reservation and a Turtle Mountain Chippewa.

Fred Lane, a board member and Chemawa alumnus, said the school "deserves more money spent on education, not a $63,000 fence that does no good.''

Officials at BIA headquarters in Washington, D.C., were not immediately available to comment on Friday.

Student leaders hastily gathered 250 signatures from their peers Wednesday night and presented them to the board Thursday, complaining about the fence. A parent committee also sent a similar letter to the board.

The board, which acts only in an advisory capacity, unanimously approved a resolution protesting the fence. It will be sent to the BIA with the student and parent letters.

Scott Arnoux, a Blackfeet from Browning, Mont., said the school already has a bad image in Salem. "They're going to think it's a disciplinary school,'' he said. "Like they are trying to keep animals in here from escaping.''

The fence is being constructed around the front of the school and dorm buildings. But Byers said the fence might be continued around the rear of a new $12 million dorm that will be built this summer.

He said he was given no say in the matter after he was told the fence is needed to protect the school from visitors to an adjoining Indian Health Service center.

The clinic provides medical services to the students, but also to any American Indian people in the area. There is one entrance to the campus and visitors must pass the school to reach the clinic.

Harding noted that the fence also partitions the school and dorms from the athletic fields and a sweat lodge.