One of the Montgomery, New York, students who were sent home for showing up on "Senior Celebrity Day" dressed as Kiss is speaking out -- saying administrators feared that violence would erupt in school.

"Our principal told us that someone would come in dressed up in leather, and punch a teacher in the back of the head and nobody would get the blame -- because they couldn't identify us," Derek Chomyn, who dressed as Paul Stanley, tells WPDH (embedded below). "We offered to wear our nametags on our shirts, so they could identify us the whole day, but they said we would have to take the makeup off. So we said: 'No, we're not doing that.' So they told us to go home."

He and the three other Valley Central High students who donned the Kiss makeup and costumes became overnight social media sensations. Kiss' Gene Simmons even retweeted a tweet from one of the students' mothers about the ordeal.

Chomyn said mimicking Kiss' elaborate get-ups was a time-consuming process: "The whole week before, we were planning, and getting all of the supplies," he continued. "We had to get up really early in the morning to the do the makeup -- because that took forever."

When they arrived on campus, Chomyn said fellow students were dressed as Miley Cyrus, Michael Jackson -- and even Cheech and Chong -- but they were not similarly sent home to change. The students faced no other disciplinary measures.

Listen to the Interview with Derek Chomyn

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