A high school yearbook is always a source of a whirlpool of emotions. I remember fellow students counting how many times they were pictured in it, and who had the worst photo. some teams got great big pictures, while other school groups got a tiny snapshot. My high school was all-boys, and Catholic, so certain things just weren't in it. One of them was pictures of couples together, kissing, hugging, laughing. However, my brother and sister went to Rutherford High School, and their yearbooks looked completely different. Which brings me to another city: Newark.In a New York Times editorial in today's paper, I just read about an unfortunate controversy that shows how controversial a kiss can be, especially when it's in a high school yearbook. The article describes how a Newark high school yearbook staff blacked out a kiss between two male students, and how the Superintendent of the Newark schools ordered the ink-out.
She was quoted as saying that the picture was "suggestive" and "fairly illicit." She did not have the yearbook staff blackout any other photos of heterosexual couples kissing. Upon questioning, Maria Bolden, the super, stated that she had not known about the other kissing photos, and if she had, would have had them blacked out also. That is not the point.
The gay student was quoted as feeling "hurt and embarrassed" by the action, which, in my thinking, was more than a misunderstanding, as Ms. Bolden claimed. In 2007, in a free society and public school system, one would hope for more enlightened thinking. Although, sometimes a kiss is not just a kiss, or so it seems.
1 comment:
Daddydan,
I was preparing to write about this today, but got caught up in the integration S.ct. case. On Blue Jersey at http://www.bluejersey.com/frontPage.do?nextDiaryId=1 they have been on top of this case and forced the principal to apologize which was not good enough because the Principal did not even call the student personally, but finally the principal apologized (to her credit) in front of the entire graduating class and called the incident her "lowest moment in her tenure" and seemed genuinely embarrassed. She also agreed to meet four times a year with a LBGTI task force that Garden State Equality is forming. Maybe something good can come of outright bigotry on the part of the school.
Thanks for posting DaddyDan. I also saw the post on Cheney on your blog...great stuff.
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