Parents outraged at SLO County school yearbook photos saying ‘F-ck MAGA,’ ‘F-ck ICE’
On Saturday morning, Paso Robles High School student Lyric Johnson received a text from her father that included a link to a Facebook post.
When Johnson clicked on the link, she found herself suddenly staring at her own photo — taken at an anti-ICE protest that she helped organize in February — followed by hundreds of comments from outraged parents and community members.
The photo in question depicted Johnson holding a sign that said “F-ck MAGA” with a drawing of a black panther next to an ice machine labeled with “abolish ICE” and “no ICE.”
A different image in the post depicted another protest attendee holding a sign that said, “F-ck ICE.”
Both photos were published in the Paso Robles High School yearbook as part of a spread of protest coverage by yearbook staff and student journalists.
“Paso Robles High school has hit an all-time low!” said Facebook user and Paso Robles parent Tamara Marks Hodel, who shared the photos in a Paso Robles High School alumni group. “Super classy to put this in a the (sic) yearbook!”
By Tuesday, the post sharing the yearbook photos had received more than 1,200 comments debating the merit of including documentation of the protest — and photos that included profanity — in the end-of-year publication.
The controversy has now prompted a school district response, raising questions about the line between students’ right to editorial control versus district staff oversight.
“The issue under review is not the coverage of the student protest itself,” the school district said in a Facebook post on Saturday. “Student expression and the documentation of significant events that occur during a school year are appropriate subjects for a yearbook.”
“Rather, the concern is that profane language appeared in a publication produced under the school’s supervision and was distributed to students and families, which is a matter we take seriously,” it continued.
Parent says yearbook profanity was inappropriate. Students say it’s accurate
While online opinions about the yearbook coverage ranged from critical to supportive, many commenters were concerned about the inclusion of profanity in the photos.
Some commenters suggested that the F-words should have been blurred out or removed.
Hodel, whose Facebook post received the bulk of the attention, told The Tribune on Tuesday that she did support the documentation of the protest but took issue with the use of profanity and the way the information was displayed.
“I think we need to teach the kids how to do it in a productive manner,” she said, “where vulgar language is not the first thing people see.”
Hodel, who found out about the photos after purchasing the yearbook for her child who is a junior at the high school, added that she was frustrated by the “lack of both sides,” which she characterized as “manipulation of a child’s mind.”
“It’s OK to have freedom of speech and to be passionate about a topic, but you should also put the other side of that topic to show both sides,” she told The Tribune.
The student protesters, however, told The Tribune that the yearbook’s coverage was accurate photojournalism.
“That’s what happened,” said Paso Robles student Jesus Ursulo, who helped organize the February protest and is also a student journalist but not part of the yearbook staff. “And realistically, like, blurring that out or taking that out of a book is removing what actually happened in history.”
Ursulo pointed out that the high schoolers often read racial slurs in their history books and required reading, like “To Kill a Mockingbird,” to get an accurate picture of what history really looked like.
“You don’t sugarcoat it, because that is what happened,” added Johnson, who interviewed with The Tribune alongside Ursulo.
Students say protest deserved to be documented
The February protest was a significant event during the school year — drawing more than 300 students who walked out of class and marched from the high school to the Niblick Road overpass, chanting, holding signs and waving flags.
The protest came after several other anti-ICE walkouts in SLO County, reflecting nationwide sentiments as tensions between federal immigration enforcement and American communities were on the rise.
Johnson and Ursulo told The Tribune they were glad the protest made it into the yearbook and felt that it was something that affected their community and deserved to be documented.
“It’s really important because, like, people don’t see how these things are affecting people all around us,” Johnson said. “... I feel like that needs to be seen in our yearbook, because it happened with our school.”
“We felt like it was necessary and like accurate photojournalism,” Ursulo added.
The fact people are still talking about the protest over three months after it happened leads the students to believe their actions are still making an impact.
“It’s been months, so something’s obviously working,” Johnson said.
Off Facebook, the students said they’ve received support from their community at school.
Online, however, they said commenters have threatened to report them to ICE, and have used racially charged descriptors like “ghetto” to describe the yearbook.
They said they’ve also been accused of sowing division in the community and reported seeing rumors that students in the photos were flashing gang signs — which seemed to Ursulo to be racial profiling.
“It was just a peace sign with their thumb sticking out,” Ursulo told The Tribune. “Like three fingers up, like, normal peace sign, and yeah, they were just like making stuff up.”
“I feel like a lot of this backlash that we’re receiving is very targeted,” he added.
District says issue is ‘under review.’ What are students’ rights?
The Paso Robles school district announced on Saturday that, after receiving complaints from the community, it was reviewing how the photos displaying profanity were allowed to be published in the school yearbook.
The district made sure to clarify that the profanity — not the coverage of the protest — was the issue under investigation.
“While students have important rights to freedom of expression, including in official student publications, the inclusion of profanity in a school-sponsored publication does not align with district expectations, board policy, or applicable provisions of California Education Code,” the statement, which was posted on social media, said.
District spokesperson Melissa Godsey added to The Tribune in an email on Monday that “encouragement of violence” in the yearbook’s protest coverage was also part of the review.
The district said in the statement that it was “evaluating potential options” to rectify the situation.
“While no final decisions have been made, possible remedies under consideration include corrective measures related to the affected page and improvements to publication review procedures moving forward,” it said.
The district encouraged community members to contact Principal Mike Susank or district staff with their concerns — and not to reach out to yearbook students or student social media pages with complaints.
The school’s review of the yearbook processes raises questions about the line between editorial control and district oversight.
California students, by law, have editorial control over student news publications and yearbooks — and Paso Robles’ board policy on the topic is built upon the relevant state education code.
“Pupil editors of official school publications shall be responsible for assigning and editing the news, editorial, and feature content of their publications subject to the limitations of this section,” California Education Code says.
Faculty advisers, however, have the responsibility to supervise student journalism and yearbooks to “maintain professional standards of English and journalism” and otherwise ensure the publication is lawful, according to the code.
The law also grants students the freedom of expression in student publications, except for expression that is considered ”obscene, libelous, or slanderous” or incites students to commit crimes on school grounds, violate school rules or disrupt school operations.
School officials are prohibited by law from engaging in prior restraint — a phrase referring to the practice of censoring speech before it can be published — except in the case that the speech violates the law.
“School officials shall have the burden of showing justification without undue delay prior to a limitation of pupil expression under this section,” the code said.
Ursulo, who is enrolled in the high school’s journalism pathway, expressed appreciation for the laws protecting student expression.
“If a teacher were to control what we did, or like, the district were to control what we did, it would just, I guess, not be true to what’s actually happening in the community,” he said.
Ursulo said he hopes the district will take into account multiple perspectives when evaluating the issue, but he had concerns about the district’s reaction so far.
“I honestly felt like their response was a little, like, untruthful in the sense that they are telling the community that they can censor us and that they’re willing to, like, look into it, when it’s like realistically, you can’t,” he said.
When questioned about the issue by The Tribune, Godsey could not offer any additional information about potential changes underway.
“As for the separation between student editorial control and district oversight, that is one of the questions being examined as part of the current review,” she said via email. “Until that review is complete, I don’t have additional information to share.”
The Paso Robles yearbook editor-in-chief declined to comment for this story.
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