http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showa.html?article=44670
September 28, 2004
By BRIAN ECKHOUSE
Douglass’ lawyer, Penny Dean, has said she would sue the district by Oct. 31 if the school does not overturn its decision. Douglass is an avid sports shooter.
Londonderry Superintendent Nathan S. Greenberg said the district stands by its decision, and is prepared for a protracted legal battle.
Despite the likely lawsuit between Londonderry and Douglass, Jostens backs the district.
“We support whatever the position of the school is, and in this case the school owns the publication because they signed the contract,” said Cole Harris, a Jostens yearbook publishing consultant, who is based in Portland, Maine.
“And if guns are not allowed in the school, I feel it’s inappropriate to have it in the yearbook. It’s contradictory.”
(So, they are saying horses and cars are allowed in the school?)
Several Londonderry faculty and administrators, including Greenberg, Londonderry High School Principal James Elefante and assistant yearbook adviser Steve
Juster, have echoed Harris’ sentiment that the inclusion of a gun — even a sports shooting shotgun — is “inappropriate.”
“Let’s say (the district) would go ahead and do this,” Harris said. “Then what happens next? It seems to open a Pandora’s box. I completely support free speech, and (Douglass) can do what he wants in his own book. But it’s (Londonderry’s) property. This manuscript is the history of the school this year. It’s their property, under their guidelines.”
He later added, “I’d hate to be a parent of a Columbine student who perished and then see a gun in a high school yearbook.”
Londonderry has a strict no-tolerance policy on violence, drugs and alcohol, but the “student publications” section within the district’s guidebook does not mention a school yearbook or newspaper.
“There’s no policy that you can’t have a gun in a yearbook. But the yearbook has always had the right to edit (content and photos),” Elefante said. “Schools have the right to say, ‘It’s not appropriate.’”
However, Dean said the school is inconsistent, citing yearbook precedent. In the past 25 years, LHS has permitted its seniors to submit yearbook headshots featuring musical instruments and the occasional oddity, including a student stroking a horse’s head, which appeared in the 1997 yearbook.
“It’s a rare thing (to include an object),” Juster said. “But the flexibility is there.”
In the 2004 yearbook, one student is holding her in-line skates; instruments figure into two others’ photos. In 2003, one student — dressed in a cadet outfit — is standing in front of an American flag; another student is holding a guitar.
In 2001, one student honored the Oscar-winning movie, American Beauty, with a hand holding a white flower; there is no headshot. In lieu of photographs, two graduates drew themselves: a girl in 1999, and a boy in 1994; in the one-slide cartoon, the boy grips his hands as claws, seemingly to humor or perhaps slightly frighten the reader.
Throughout the 1980s, students infrequently featured an instrument — generally a guitar, saxophone or trumpet — in their yearbook photos. In 1984, the yearbook staff included a photo of students with a Pontiac convertible on a senior headshot page.
In the 25 previous yearbooks, there are no guns displayed in headshot sections. “No one called (last school year) and complained about a kid holding a saxophone,” Elefante said. “People will call if a kid is holding a gun.”