Chattooga High "Censorship:" Photos Too Hot For Yearbook?

WRCB ^ | Nov. 6, 2009 | Dabid Carroll

[GrootheWanderer]

Some Chattooga (GA) High School students paid $50 in advance for their 2009 yearbook, but when they picked it up last week, four pages were cut out, literally.

They were told the pictures were inappropriate. We wondered, how bad could they possibly be? What type of photos were so scandalous, they had to be removed from an already-printed school yearbook?

The 2009 yearbook was delivered to students, two months late with pages 11-14 clipped out. The books arrived at Chattooga High in early September, but are just now going out to those students who had purchased them last year. On page 10, you see part of a girl's head, next to an unrelated page 15. What happened to the pages in between?

2009 grad Aaron Wentz said, "I was real upset, looks like it was done with a box cutter, you can't miss it. It's been mutilated. I paid for it in advance, it's my property and the school has taken it upon themselves to rip it up."

The yearbook was dedicated to former Chattooga teacher Dr. Alan Perry, who supervised the yearbook for the past 27 years. After he retired in May, a new principal and yearbook advisor didn't like what they saw: photos of shirtless boys playing basketball. So before distributing to students, they began the two-month process of cutting pages 11-14 out of every yearbook.

[GrootheWanderer]

Innappropriate? An overreaction? Or both?

[coconutt2000]

Overreaction.

[Admin Moderator]

Your made-up title: "Pages Cut from High School Yearbook" was no match for the title at the linked source. Please do not make up your title for any published material. Just use the published title. We're trying to reduce the number of threads we have to pull. Thanks.

[Brugmansian]

My name isn't even listed in my HS yearbook. No photo either of course. Principal called my parents to try to convince me to go to graduation. I said, nope, I've served my time, there is no requirement I do anything else. Six months later I got my diploma in the mail.

So well..whatever they do or don't do with HS yearbooks...my feeling is everyone would be better off without them...and public High Schools.

[GrootheWanderer]

Sorry. At the top of my browser, the headline is “Pages Cut from High School Yearbooks for ‘Inappropriate’ Content.

I didn’t even realize that the headline in the body of the article is different.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Oh, my goodness ! I’ve got pictures of boys playing b-ball without t-shirts in my junior high school yearbook from 1987. I’d better turn it in, all that porn.

[dayglored]

> At the top of my browser, the headline is “Pages Cut from High School Yearbooks for ‘Inappropriate’ Content. I didn’t even realize that the headline in the body of the article is different.

The browser top-line displays the string in the HTML "TITLE" tag in the webpage, whatever it is. That string bears no necessary relationship whatsoever to any of the content on the webpage, such as an article headline. A good webpage designer will set the "TITLE" string to something about the content, but it could just as easily say "Webpage Template 47", or "Made by Josie", or be blank, in which case the browser typically substitutes its own name.

So now you know -- don't trust the browser top-line when looking for an article headline.

[dayglored]

> Overreaction.

No kidding. I might elaborate a bit...

Were the pictures of boys without shirts playing basketball?

YES.

Were the boys giving each other t!tty-twisters?

NO. Just playing basketball.

Overreaction.

[LukeL]

Yet if they were the swim team posing in their uniforms (speedos) it would not be an issue.

[Mjaye]

Had the photos contained gang related or other inappropriate tattoos on the boys (can’t tell from the video), I’d agree with the concerns. But these kids paid for a nice book, so any editing decision should have been made prior to publication to avoid mutilating the books. The kids should ask for a refund or adjustment.

[Drew68]

Oh, my goodness ! I’ve got pictures of boys playing b-ball without t-shirts in my junior high school yearbook from 1987. I’d better turn it in, all that porn.

In my yearbook there's a photo of a senior buying beer under the heading "18 --A Right of Passage" (it was legal to buy beer in those days). Photos of students smoking in the courtyard (also legal) and a photo of a student's dirty car where someone had written "Do Bongs" on his rear windshield.

Yep. The 80s were a different time.

[DemforBush]

I’d say both an overreaction and possibly a petty criminal act. If the students pre-paid for the yearbook, I would think that makes it their personal property.

Of course, schools and school officials are generally given pretty broad legal leeway when it comes to dealing with matters related to students, so who knows?

At any rate, it’s good to see that high school is just as absurd as it was when I was there.

[GrootheWanderer]

The editor of a newspaper in a nearby city wrote a column about this today. Here’s part of it:

I graduated from Chattooga High School in 1980. It was a good school and to this day several of my closest friends are my former classmates.

That’s why the story I read this week had me shaking my head.

It seems the new principal, an ex-military, by-the-book type engineered one of the lamer stunts I’ve seen in recent years.

The principal, with the support of his superintendent, personally lopped four pages out of the schools yearbook because of pictures he found offensive.

So what were the students doing in those controversial photos? Drinking brown liquor? Bagging dope? Robbing a Kangaroo?

Hardly.

Mostly they were just acting like doofus teenage boys — playing basketball, mugging for the camera.

Maybe it was the fact that many of the boys were shirtless in the pictures that drove the powers-that-be into a scissors-slashing frenzy, but I’ve got news for them. That’s what boys do when they play ball.

http://www.daltondailycitizen.com/opinion/local_story_311220119.html?keyword=topstory