Memories etched in time...

Jun 08, 2005 11:38



Remarks by students lead to recall of yearbook
By Trisha Howard
Of the Post-Dispatch
06/07/2005

What makes a high school yearbook most likely to become the target of a recall effort?

A slew of superlatives in which students say they are most likely to be the "last dying virgin" or, on the flip side, to be a stripper, a porn star or a bum "most likely to spread multiple diseases."

St. Louis schools Superintendent Creg E. Williams is calling for students at Central High School, a visual and performing arts magnet school, to return their copies of the yearbook for a refund of their $15.

The yearbook - a photocopied affair with spiral binding - is riddled with sexually suggestive statements, photos in which students flash gang signs and other material that Williams described as racist, sexist and offensive. Advertisement

He also has launched an investigation of the teacher who sponsored the yearbook, Bill Perry, as well as the high school's principal, Stanley Engram. Williams said Perry printed the yearbook without showing it to Engram for approval, then distributed copies of it last week.

Williams said Perry had printed about 125 copies; the school has only about 20 of the books in hand.

Perry has been out on sick leave since last month, and Engram will remain in his school for the rest of the school year, which ends Monday, Williams said.

"Disciplinary action will be taken," Williams said, adding that he also would revise district policy to ensure that principals review yearbooks before they are printed.

Engram declined to comment Monday on the matter.

Teachers union President Mary Armstrong joined Williams in calling the yearbook "totally inappropriate." But she also said that Perry, an art teacher with no journalism training, may have regarded the content as free speech.

Thomas Blumenthal, a lawyer who serves on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri, said the U.S. Supreme Court has given school districts broad discretion in censoring student publications.

But at a magnet school that emphasizes the arts, Blumenthal said, he finds such censorship troubling.

"The result is you are dampening freedom of expression for individual students," Blumenthal said. "The school is caught in a dilemma where they have to decide whether to foster that freedom, or decide that they don't want to offend."

Favorite line: "...at a magnet school that emphasizes the arts, Blumenthal said, he finds such censorship troubling."

Magnet schools are silly places. First of all, they're called magnet schools and I never really understood why, even though I attended one myself for 5 years. Secondly, just because a person is "of above average intelligence" (whatever that might mean) or skilled in some type of creative/performing art (dueling banjos), does not give them license to be an asshole (that's what post-secondary education is for).

I mean how would you have liked it if your senior superlative were "most likely to spread multiple diseases"? I mean, sure, it's funny if it's true...

and it's actually not even that funny. Magnet school kids should be able to come up with better funny. I scoff at their petty humor.

Still, the nostalgia-whore in me believes that no one would really want a statement like that to linger around in the "anals of time" (haha...who said that one? I forget...)

I mean especially if you were a graduating senior. No one really remembers that shit you pulled when you were a freshman. Well ok, maybe your close friends, but in 20 years the rest of your former classmates are pretty much just gonna remember all that senior year stuff. (Or maybe that's just me... I bought a yearbook in the 8th grade and then one again the 12th grade, I like to call all that stuff in the middle "The Lost Brooks Years")

However, on the other hand...it's kinda dumb to expect the students to return the yearbooks. They're collectors items now. Out of 125 books only 20 of them have been returned? Yeah, probably by the 20 people that were insulted the worst...

Anyway, all those things aside, probably the most disturbing to me is the fact that the yearbook committee published a photocopied and spiral-bound yearbook...and sold the thing for 15 bucks a pop!
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