A Florida Highschool Editing Yearbook Photos Of 80 Female Students To Make Them Look ‘Modest’
For a place meant to foster knowledge, a high school out of Florida did something pretty dumb. Bartram Trail High School, a public school located in St. Johns, Florida, was forced to offer parents refunds and apologies after discovering that they had doctored photos of 80 students at the school. According to the St. Augustine Record, all of the pictures that were edited appeared to have been done so to ensure “modesty.”
Bartram Trail sparked backlash after female students’ yearbook photos appeared to have been digitally edited.
“There’s a black box over my chest, and the cardigan on the side like moved over and it looks awkward, and I was very confused,” according to a student who spoke to News4Jax. A reporter for Action News Jax, Ben Ryan, shared photos of the images that were edited to Twitter. One of the images includes a 14-year-old ninth-grader whose breasts were covered up in the yearbook photo.
Parents and students protested the photo edits after noticing them in yearbooks that were sold for $100.
In response to the backlash, the St. Johns County School District revealed that it would issue refunds for yearbooks that were returned. In a statement to News4Jax, St. Johns County School District said that the alterations had been done to avoid omitting students who had violated dress codes from the yearbook. “So the digital alterations were a solution to make sure all students were included in the yearbook,” St. Johns County School District responded in a statement.
According to a disclaimer on the district’s website, students’ pictures might be subjected to alteration to fit dress codes: “All images in ads and all individual student pictures must be consistent with the St. Johns County School District Student Code of Conduct or may be digitally adjusted.”
