Responding to fierce public criticism, the Lenoir City, Tenn., school board is investigating the decision to publish an article in the 2012 Lenoir City High School yearbook in which a student describes his decision to come out publicly as gay.Today's Knoxville News-Sentinel reports that, during a discussion of the yearbook article at Wednesday's board meeting, Chairwoman Rosemary Quillen promised "a permanent solution so that situations like this never happen again."Nothing was said publicly about the status of English department chairman and yearbook adviser James Yoakley, an 11-year veteran of LCHS who has been the target of public hostility.
Tag: yearbooks
Miss. student settles lawsuit after being excluded from yearbook because of her tuxedo
The Mississippi teenager whose yearbook portrait was removed because she wore a tuxedo will have her photo displayed alongside her classmates’ in the school library, as part of a settlement reached with the school district last week.The Copiah County School District also will scrap its portrait policy that required male students to wear tuxedos and female students to wear drapes for their official yearbook photos, the ACLU of Mississippi announced.Instead, all students will don graduation caps and gowns for their photos.Ceara Sturgis, a 2010 graduate of the Wesson Attendance Center, filed a discrimination lawsuit “on the basis of sex and on the basis of sex stereotypes” against the eastern Mississippi school district in August 2010.Sturgis, who prefers more masculine clothing, felt “uncomfortable” wearing the drape, designed to mimic a dress, in her photo.
S.D.-area school officials lose jobs after raiding student extracurricular accounts
One of the most distressing calls we get on the Student Press Law Center's hotline is some variation of this one: "We came back from summer break and discovered that all the money in our yearbook account is gone, and nobody will tell us where it went."Cash-strapped schools undoubtedly are tempted by any pot of money, even one that is earmarked for a student organization, in their desperation to pay the bills.
Wisconsin school district moves toward banning bar ads in yearbook
A Wisconsin school district is contemplating the unusual step of banning yearbook ads that -- at least among American high schools -- are themselves quite unusual.Edgerton School District’s superintendent, responding to complaints from some community members, recently told Edgerton High School’s yearbook staff to purge its advertiser list of alcohol-based businesses, such as bars, grills and liquor stores, according to the Janesville Gazette. The school board plans to provide a list of "approved" advertisers to the yearbook this fall, and the indications are that at least some alcohol vendors won't make the cut.For nearly 50 years, The Crimson Tide Annual has published ads submitted by local businesses, including those that sell alcohol, to help cover its publication costs.
Preventing yearbook vandalism
As spring delivery yearbooks begin to arrive on high school campuses across the country, there will be — as happens every year — a tiny few that include unpleasant surprises (and it is a very “tiny” number relative to the thousands of yearbooks that will arrive exactly as expected.) That’s because every year, it’s discovered that someone snuck some prank entry into the yearbook files — often after the pages had been signed off on by editors but before being sent to the printer, but sometimes simply by being sneaky and slipping it past the editors.Among those we’ve seen over the years: doctoring classmates' names, substituting an unflattering photo, inserted “coded” messages or profanity, rewriting a student bio or adding racist comments.Often the change is meant as a joke, but while their intent might have been to have some fun, there is nothing funny about the practice.