web feeds

Mobile
place an ad with the Telegraph















commentsComments (View) | Text Size make text smaller make text bigger

article tools

enlarge
Melissa Morin, a senior at Merrimack High School, won't be able to pose with a flower for her senior photo in the school yearbook. The flower is considered a prop, which is banned from school photos. This photo was taken last week at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, a location she chose because theater has defined her high school career.

Photo by BRENT MALLARD

Melissa Morin, a senior at Merrimack High School, won't be able to pose with a flower for her senior photo in the school yearbook. The flower is considered a prop, which is banned from school photos. This photo was taken last week at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, a location she chose because theater has defined her high school career.

Local/Regional

Published: Monday, September 10, 2007

Yearbook photo nixed because of flower

By KAREN LOVETT, Telegraph Staff
klovett@nashuatelegraph.com

Melissa Morin loves the stage – so much so that the Merrimack High School student decided to have her senior photograph taken backstage at the Palace Theatre in Manchester.

The 17-year-old sat barefoot on a costume trunk, wore a black and white sundress and clutched a small red flower.

Morin found out the flower is destined for the cutting room floor.

That’s because Merrimack High School’s photo policy, adopted by Principal Ken Johnson last year, calls for no hats and no props.

Johnson said the rule went into effect following “some high-profile legal cases that garnered national attention.”

In 2005, then-Londonderry High School senior Blake Douglass battled the Londonderry school board about his First Amendment right to publish a photo of himself with a gun, representative of his love of trapshooting.

In that case, a U.S. District Court judge ruled in favor of the school district, finding the decision to prohibit the photo was made by the student yearbook staff, not by administrators, and therefore wasn’t a breach of his freedom.

The Douglass case drew national attention and drove many school districts to review their own policies. In Merrimack, Johnson said, “anytime you see high-profile legal issues, it gives cause for you to review, and amend if necessary, your policies, and we thought that this decision would be in everyone’s best interest.”

Johnson said that last year, all four grades were told about the policy but nothing was printed until this year. The school’s yearbook coordinator, Sharon Cloutier, released a document about the rule, Johnson said, but he wasn’t certain how it was distributed.

Cloutier did send a recent e-mail to parents reminding them about the due date for photos. It included a statement about no hats or props.

Kathie Roy, Morin’s mother, got that e-mail this week, but her daughter’s pictures had already been taken. Roy said she doesn’t scan all school e-mails very carefully, so it’s possible the rule was mentioned before and she didn’t see it.

Morin, however, said she was totally unaware of the policy. During a springtime meeting between Mark Lawrence Photographers, the studio hired to take student pictures, and the junior class, she didn’t recall any mention of props.

Regardless, Morin thinks the bigger issue is about fairness.

Long ago, Morin said, she made up her mind to “show off what she loves” in her senior photo. Other students, she said, have also been photographed outside the box, such as in Greeley Park or on the athletic fields.

In some pictures published in the 2007 yearbook, Morin noticed flowers in the background or students leaning against trees.

She wonders: Aren’t those things props? And if so, then what’s the difference if she’s holding a flower?

In an e-mail from Cloutier to Morin’s photographer, Brad Mallard, Cloutier wrote that because of the school’s policy, the flowers would be cropped. She wrote that the photograph could be published if advertising space were purchased in the book. Parents are offered the chance to buy a spot to write messages and publish pictures.

Morin questioned that if the photo was good enough for the back pages, why not for the senior section?

Mallard, who runs a small studio in Manchester, agreed wholeheartedly with his client.

“I totally understand that schools have right to dictate policy,” he said. “I think the issue is people need to be made aware that we’ve thrown common sense out the window. When we’re restricting kids from holding a stupid flower in their hand, it’s kind of silly, quite frankly.”

Morin’s mom is torn on the issue.

“I understand (the school’s) dilemma in trying to make it black and white . . . and not blur the line,” she said. “On the other hand, if something is allowed in the classroom, something benign, then I think it’s perfectly acceptable (to allow it in a photograph),” she said.

Some schools in the area have taken that approach.

Souhegan High School’s policy is that students can’t present anything libelous, slanderous, obscene, copyrighted or that endorses illegal activities, said Principal Scott Prescott. Revised and approved by the school board shortly after the Londonderry case, Souhegan’s photography policy mirrors the school’s everyday conduct rules.

Other schools’ policies reflect Merrimack’s take. Neither Campbell nor Milford high schools allow props.

“It’s worked well for us,” said Milford Principal Brad Craven.

Morin said she plans to talk to Merrimack’s administration. Johnson said generally, he explains to people who “appeal” to him his rationale for policies. He added that it is his legal right to censor yearbooks and school newspapers.

Blake Douglass, the Londonderry High student, did some censoring of his own. In place of where his picture would have been was a black box, said his former attorney, Penny Dean.

Then he printed off lots of sticky-backed copies of his prized photo and did what any proud senior would do: handed them out to all his friends.

Karen Lovett can be reached at 594-6402 or klovett@nashuatelegraph.com.

Comments from unverified accounts will be reviewed twice daily. Details here. Please verify your email address to allow immediate posting of comments.



Link to Get Shopping
JOBS | HOMES| AUTOS
Top Jobs
Lowell Health Care Center

 Catholic Medical Center

 First Student
Top Properties
Nashua - Rentals - Luxury

 Nashua - 1-2 Bedrooms

place an ad


back to top