Three students at a New Jersey high school found slogans supporting President Donald Trump on their shirts and yearbook quotes edited out of their yearbook.
Two Wall High School students had Trump logos edited off their clothing, and one student had a quote from the president that never appeared in the yearbook, WABC reported.
Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, a junior at the school, wore a Trump sweater vest for his yearbook photo, but the logo appeared to be “cropped” or edited out.
“Maybe they just cropped it out and it wasn’t something I should worry about, they just did it,” Wyatt said, not thinking there was any ulterior motive behind it.
Then, his sister Montana, the freshman class president, noticed that a quote she picked from President Trump to feature in the yearbook along with her picture never made it to print.
“I like thinking big, if you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big. By Donald Trump,” Montana recalled the quote saying.
Montana said the senior class president’s quote from FDR made it into the yearbook, but hers did not.
“I sent it in on time, everything was good, and it wasn’t there,” Montana said.
A third student, Grant Berardo, donned his “Make America Great Again” t-shirt in his yearbook photo. When he opened the yearbook, however, all he found was a photo of him wearing a solid black shirt, the Asbury Park Press reported.
“I don’t think there was a deep-seated plot here, but I think there’s a yearbook committee and a yearbook adviser, and somewhere in the mix someone or several people decided to censor three students,” Berardo told the New York Post. “The fact that the committee found it OK to censor the president’s name or anything that wasn’t offensive is just wrong.”
Berardo’s father, Joseph, wants the district to reprint the yearbooks at their expense and use it as a “teaching moment” about students’ First Amendment rights.
“I want a letter from the administration explaining why the yearbooks are being reissued, and it should be used as a teaching moment related to the First Amendment in civil discourse,” Joseph said.
The school district does not have a policy against students expressing their political views and “does not condone any censorship,” according to the superintendent.
The superintendent added that there is currently an investigation into the incident.
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