Jul 7, 2008 5:31 am US/Pacific
Covina H.S. To Attempt To Resolve Yearbook Woes
COVINA, Calif.
Covina High School administrators will meet with Black Student Union members and their families on Monday in an attempt to resolve a dispute over racially insensitive names that appeared up in the school's yearbook.
The meeting is the most recent move by school officials to calm community outrage over BSU members being identified with fake names such as "Tay Tay Shaniqua," "Crisphy Nanos" and "Laquan White" in a photo in the Charter Oak High School yearbook, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Other mistakes were also in the yearbook. Charter Oak student Joe Aragon, who said he was not on the yearbook staff but knows the student responsible for some of the errors, told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that rather than being malicious or a prank, the mistakes were "filler names" or placeholders put in the rough draft of the yearbook and never replaced with the correct names in the final copy.
"Simple filler names could be hurtful even if the intent was not to hurt anybody," Aragon said.
Officials at the high school had stickers printed with the correct names to paste over the fake ones, but civil rights groups as well as some students and their families alleged the fake names were racist, and they are demanding a formal apology in addition to reprint of the yearbook.
Principal Kathleen Wiard told The Times she will consult BSU members on what corrective measures to take "out of respect to them."
Wiard said one possibility would be to order reprints of the entire page because other names besides those of BSU students also were incorrect.
"But before the final decision is made, I want to hear what kids and parents have to say," she told The Times.
Wiard said that only a few students have asked for the stickers, and that most of the school's 2,000 students have yearbooks with the wrong names.
Jordan Smith, a BSU member who graduated last month, told The Times that she wants the school to provide a replacement page.
Smith said that no matter what happens at Monday's meeting, the response by school administrators has been inexcusably slow.
"They could have done it quicker," she told The Times. "We shouldn't even have to go through all this."
Smith has also called for a formal, written apology.
Wiard told the newspaper she will issue a statement after the meeting.
(© 2008 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)
