Students apologize for offensive yearbook page
May 21, 2018, 9:35 PM | Updated: May 22, 2018, 1:08 am
SPANISH FORK, Utah – Students at Maple Mountain High School spent Monday apologizing for a page in their yearbook that uses unkind words to describe students at a rival high school.
“We really just want to do our best to turn it around,” Mary Kilpatrick, a junior at Maple Mountain, said about their efforts to send positive messages to students at Springville High School.
Paper hearts with kind messages cover the entrance to Springville High School on Monday.
Around 5:45 a.m., Mountain Maple students attached hundreds of paper hearts to the doors and windows of Springville High School. They also used sidewalk chalk to write encouraging words near the school’s entrances.
Students, parents and school officials discovered the controversial page on Friday as Maple Mountain’s yearbook was distributed to students. The page shows a word cloud in the shape of Springville’s logo with words like “greedy,” “trash,” “egotistic,” and “annoying” used to describe Springville students.
A page in Maple Mountain High School’s yearbook takes uses critical words to describe students at rival Springville High School.
“It’s very unfortunate and Maple Mountain High School is very apologetic,” said Lana Hiskey, spokesperson for the Nebo School District. “They are just devastated and saddened that this made it into the yearbook.”
The surprise page had administrators at the Nebo School District scrambling over the weekend as they tried to figure out how the page got printed. The district says procedures are being put in place to make sure yearbooks are double checked before being sent to the printer.
Administrators at Maple Mountain High School say the offensive yearbook page was not authorized by staff.
“It’s very disappointing where one or two students can come up with something that makes it sound like it’s from the entire high school — which it is not,” Hiskey said. “The majority of the students, if not 90 percent of the students, here at the high school were just really shocked and saddened that that made it into the yearbook, because they just don’t feel that way.”
Maple Mountain students also worked over the weekend to come up with a plan to apologize to Springville students.
Related: Yearbook page causing controversy called a ‘mistake’
“We’ve all grown up together,” said Brynlie Ivie, a junior at Maple Mountain. “So it’s just kind of like contentions between friends that sadly has to be sorted out.”
Students at Maple Mountain High School make a poster to apologize to Springville High School.
The two high schools come from the same tightknit community, students say. They hope to plan a joint service project this summer as a way to make something positive out of the yearbook mistake.
“I really hope that this will bring us closer together,” said Brynlee Holmes, the junior class president at Maple Mountain. “I can already see it uniting our two schools more.”
As an option for students to cover the offensive word cloud in the yearbook, the district supplied large stickers containing the logos of area schools. The sticker reads, “At the end of the day…friends.”
