(Yearbook image from #STOPtheSTICKERS Change.org page)
The Seminole County Public Schools board voted unanimously May 10 to not cover up LGBTQ images in a school’s yearbook that were taken during a student protest earlier this year.
Lyman High School principal Michael Hunter had notified students earlier this week that their yearbooks would need to have certain images covered before they could be distributed. The photos in question depict students holding rainbow Pride flags and one student holding a sign that reads “Love is Love” during the “Say Gay” student walkout in March.
But after more than two dozen individuals spoke out against the censorship at a school board meeting May 10, the board agreed to let the images remain uncovered and place a sticker in the yearbook acknowledging that the walkout was not a school-sanctioned event.
“We are feeling relieved today,” says Skye Tiedemann, a senior at Lyman High School and co-editor-in-chief of the school’s yearbook. “We were very passionate about this because censorship is not OK especially when it is covering up something that means so much to so many people.”
Tiedemann says the students were worried at first that the school board wouldn’t side with them but after seeing the amount of support that turned up at the meeting, they could not be happier.
“From the beginning [of the meeting] we were all in tears,” she says. “The very first speaker talked about how many people commit suicide in the LGBTQ community and how we can’t silence people in the community. Students and adults all spoke out, students spoke up from other schools, it was such an amazing atmosphere to be in.”
In fact, Tiedemann notes that the only person in the room who supported censoring the photos was SCPS Superintendent Serita Beamon.
“She felt strongly that us having the walkout in the yearbook was a way of us promoting it,” Tiedemann says. “Which was not the case in our opinion. We are journalists and we see it as we were documenting what happened at our school.”
Students called Beamon’s explanation into question when the news initially broke, pointing to two other Seminole County High Schools — Hagerty High School and Oviedo High School — whose yearbooks have photos of their school walkouts and were not censored.
“We were told the issue was that we showed people visually excited during the walkout,” Tiedemann says. “In the other schools, they did not have photos that showed the excitement of the students during the walkout. That is why [Beamon] felt we were promoting it.”
Beamon acknowledged during the meeting that both school’s yearbooks would be reviewed again and if needed would be supplied with the same sticker indicating it was not a school-sanctioned event.
As for Lyman’s school principal, Tiedemann says there is no bad blood between him and the students.
“Mr. Hunter was just being cautious as a first-year principal and from what he told us he just asked them is this OK, thinking they would be fine with it but that wasn’t the case and it made its way up the ladder and became a big deal,” she says.
The Lyman High School yearbook staff look to distribute this year’s yearbooks this Friday and next Monday during the senior picnic.
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