Monday, January 9, 2012
Colorado Student Banned from Yearbook Over Racy Photo
A Colorado teenager whose yearbook picture was rejected for being too
revealing is vowing to fight the ban with her high school’s
administration, but the editors of the yearbook insist it was their
decision alone on the photo.
The five student editors of the Durango High School yearbook in Durango, Col., told the Durango Herald
they were the ones who made the call not to publish a picture of senior
Sydney Spies posing in a short yellow skirt midriff and
shoulder-exposing black shawl as her senior portrait.
“We are an award-winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the
quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional,” student
Brian Jaramillo told the paper on Thursday.
Spies was joined by her mother, Miki Spies, and a handful of fellow
Durango High students and alumni in a protest outside the school
Wednesday after, she said, administrators informed her the photo would
not be permitted because it violated dress code.
“I feel like they aren’t allowing me to have my freedom of
expression,” Spies told the Herald. ”I think the administration is
wrong in this situation, and I don’t want this to happen to other
people.”
The five editors, who said their decision was unanimous, said Spies’
blame was misplaced, in both targeting the administration, and believing
that it was a dress code issue.They also offered her an opportunity to include the photo in the yearbook, just not as her senior photo.
“If she (Spies) chooses to, the picture will run as her senior ad, not her senior portrait,” Trujillo said.
Despite the clarification from her peers into how and why the
decision was made, a meeting Spies initiated between herself, her
mother, and the school’s principal, Diane Lashinsky, was held today as
planned.
“The editors all turned their backs on me and changed their minds,”
she told the Herald. “I really do feel like they were intimidated by the
principal.”
Neither Spies nor the school responded to ABCNews.com‘s requests for comments today on the meeting’s outcome.
The Durango School District, which oversees the high school, issued the following statement to ABCNews.com“The editors of Durango High School’s yearbook informed a senior student in December that her photo in question would not be included as a senior portrait in the yearbook and asked her to submit a replacement. Durango School District 9-R’s administration supports this decision.”
Prior to today’s meeting, the Spies family told local media they
planned to meet with a civil lawyer in Denver to review their daughter’s
case.
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