Posted on 06/21/2002 5:12:27 AM PDT by Pharmboy
STRATFORD, Conn., June 20 — The high school yearbook here will be reissued with a new cover for those who request it, in an effort to still an uproar over two students who seem to be making a Nazi salute in a group picture of the class of 2002.
The two students, standing side by side in the cover photograph of 200 graduates, staunchly denied making the offensive gesture intentionally when interviewed today by school officials, insisting that they were merely waving during a pep rally in the gymnasium.
The photo on the cover of The Log, the Stratford High School yearbook, is indeed ambiguous. Many students have their arms raised, some making the peace sign and others holding an index finger raised as if signaling, "We're No. 1." The two boys are difficult to see in the throng. Their gestures are identical, stiff-armed with right palm facing down.
Some local Jewish leaders ask how two boys could have made the identical gesture coincidentally.
Sylvia Guberman, a coordinator of the United Democrats of Stratford, who said she lost 84 relatives in the Holocaust, said she found it hard to believe "that two friends standing right next to each other would accidentally make the same outstretched, closed-handed, stiff-armed salute at the exact same time."
Schools Superintendent Raymond O'Connell said that the two boys arrived together for a meeting in his office that also included the high school principal, Daniel Hatch, and several other school administrators.
"They looked me right in the eye and said all they were doing was waving, that they were not making any kind of offensive gesture," Mr. O'Connell said. But he added, "I have lingering suspicions and questions that linger in my mind."
Mr. Hatch, the principal, declined comment about whether he believed the boys' version. "Looking at the photo I can understand why some people would be offended by it," he said, "but there's no way we can tell what their intention was in raising their arms in that manner."
But he said that the school would nonetheless redesign the yearbook cover and replace any of the 400 copies that had already been distributed if the recipients so requested.
Mr. O'Connell said he had spoken with law enforcement officials who wanted to know if he believed there was any evidence of a hate crime. Capt. Andrew Knapp, the department's public information officer, said, "Right now we're leaving it in the hands of school officials."
Anyone can be pictured, as giving all sorts of signs, looking depressed, angry.
We all have our nanosec 'unguarded' moments that could be portrayed as foreboding, vile, cruel and vicious.
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