Two students from Kearney High School in Kearney, Missouri had their personal quotes about being out of the closet scrubbed from the school yearbook without warning, local news station KCTV reports.
In his yearbook quote, Joey Slivinski originally wrote: “Of course I dress well. I didn’t spend all that time in the closet for nothing.”
Thomas Swartz’s had a similar sentiment: “If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one should have to live in the closet.”
Funny, right?
Apparently school officials didn’t think so. Both young men were disappointed when they opened their yearbooks and saw their quotes mysteriously missing.
“I went to find my quote in the yearbook but, nothing was there,” Joey said.
“It was a blank picture under my name,” Thomas added.
In a letter, the school’s principal, Dave Schwarzenbach, and the superintendent of schools, Dr. Bill Nicely, said the quotes were removed for being “potentially offensive,” but, in hindsight, they realized censoring the gay teens probably wasn’t the best idea:
Dear KHS Families,
District administrators were made aware of concerns regarding the removal of senior quotes from the school yearbook. Each year, graduating seniors are provided an opportunity to pick a favorite quote to be placed in the yearbook. In an effort to protect our students, quotes that could potentially offend another student or groups of students are not published. It is the school’s practice to err on the side of caution. Doing so in this case had the unintentional consequence of offending the very students the practice was designed to protect. We sincerely apologize to those students. All KSD staff understand the importance of inclusion and acceptance especially in an educational setting. We work diligently to help every student feel safe, supported, and included. District staff participate in ongoing training around issues of diversity and support student organizations that do the same. That being said, we acknowledge our mistake and will use it as a learning opportunity to improve in the future.
Sincerely, Dave Schwarzenbach KHS Principal
Dr. Bill Nicely KSD Superintendent of Schools
Both young men say they plan to print stickers with their quotes on them and hand them out to students to place in their yearbooks.
“I’m proud to be from Kearney and I’m proud to be who I am,” Joey said. “I’m just disappointed at what happened.”
Related: Parents outraged by LGBTQ page in high school yearbook
Juanjo
If those statements are offensive someone has a very low standard for being offended.
Billysees
What a shame that mean-spiritedness towards gay folk is still alive and active in the world today.
Kangol
It’s not just “mean-spiritedness,” it’s homophobia and heterosexism. It’s not an individual issue, it’s a systemic problem.
Billysees
Kangol writes —
It’s not just “mean-spiritedness,” it’s homophobia and heterosexism. It’s not an individual issue, it’s a systemic problem.
Agree completely.
He BGB
They were probably the most clever students there from those cute remarks. Too bad this school wants to make everyone boring and the same across the board.
Jacques
The principal and district supervisor should have to pay for the stickers to add their quotes to the book as it was their homophobia that caused this problem.
girldownunder
I agree 100%. I’d go further & say that the school principal & district super ought to have to pay, out of their own, bigoted pockets, to print & to post them out to every person who bought a yearbook.
NateOcean
And what lesson did we learn hear? That school officials are disingenuous lying cowards.
If they had a beef about the quotes, why not raise the concerns with the students themselves? Or the yearbook committee? Who knows, perhaps they’ve thought of something even trendier.
Instead, the administrators delete the comments without mention. Bastards. Get use to it, students, you will encounter such dimwits as you embark on your adult life.
Fifty years from now, when these guys are thumbing thru their old yearbooks, they will see the blank space and remember what pricks ran the school back in the day.
Thomas
Typical conservative snowflakes.
GayEGO
Ah, a public high school in Misery, the school needs to pay a huge fine for discriminating against these two young men as their comments are not offensive at all. It is the school so called leaders whose actions are offensive and they should be removed from their positions.
DCguy
They claimed they were trying to protect those students.
A few questions.
From what?
Who made that decision?
What penalty has been giving to that person?