A US High School Removed the Quotes of Two Gay Students In Case of Potential Offence

The tradition at Kearney High School in Missouri, U.S., like many other schools, is for senior students to contribute quotes to a yearbook as a memento of their high school years.

But, for two students, their quotes were redacted from the final publication due to their perceived offensiveness, the Washington Post reports.  

Senior students Joey Slivinski and Thomas Swartz are openly gay and wanted to reflect their experiences in the form of a humorous quote. 

Slivinski's quote read: "Of course I dress well, I didn’t spend all that time in the closet for nothing." Swartz's was an inspiring Harry Potter reference: "If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one deserves to live in the closet."

According to the school's policy, however, these quotes were removed as they could offend some students.

A statement from the school read: "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."

It continued on to say that the policy, which was designed to protect students from offence, inadvertently offended the two students. "We sincerely apologise to those students. We acknowledge our mistake and will use it as a learning opportunity to improve in the future."

Swartz and Slivinski were quite upset by the decision to remove their quotes and leave a blank space under their names.

Swartz told KCTV 5 that he wants the school to know what they did was wrong. "I want to be able to tell other people my story about what happened," he told KCTV 5. 

The students will be printing stickers with their quotes to put into their friends' yearbooks to reconcile the issue.

Photo: iStock / spxChrome