https://www.yahoo.com/parenting/school-censors-girls-shirt-for-yearbook-photo-116918108702.html
When I read the headline, I wondered what word would be so offensive that it would be wiped out of a photo.
It paints the school in a bad light, I imagine, considering how the moniker “feminist” has been largely distorted over the past fifty years. Picture if a few students wore some other political slogan or namesake on a shirt. If the school left such a name in the picture, then the school would be implicit in supporting the beliefs of such students.
I would be floored too.
Would a tee with " humanist" or “environmentalist” be seen as equally offensive in your eyes, Halicarnassus?
“…then the school would be implicit in supporting the beliefs of such students.”
Not in this day and age. Virtually every American parent realizes that their kid’s school doesn’t enforce or embrace every motto or slogan emblazoned on the T-shirt of every student within its walls. They know the court cases. Smart administrators avoid matters of censorship when the word or image is relatively mundane. If the young woman’s T-shirt had an image of the Peanuts character ‘Lucy’ in addition to the word feminist, would they have altered the photograph? What about a ‘Father Chuck O’Malley’ T-shirt ? I hope not.
Schools have banned students from wearing the American flag on their T-shirts. And the courts allowed it.
In that particular case in California, TatinG, the judges ruled that because of previous threats of violence, restricting their freedom of speech was appropriate.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=6712154817895183168
Was there another case?
weird! Who would be offended by that?
Let alone being "insanely upset” as the teen told FOX19 of the airbrushed edit.
There are no winners nor heroes in this story.
If school request neutral clothing for a function, that is … just that. It is not a matter of the message being offensive, it is a simple matter of abiding by very simple rules in an academic environment. She can drop the activism for a few minutes and restart the crusade in most places. She is a middle schooler!
Xiggi, there is a class photo…
I can’t read what is on the various shirts but many shirts aren’t blank.
There are at least 14 or 15 students wearing shirts with graphic lettering.
One in front has a " Pierce the Veil" shirt on, which I learned is a post hardcore band.
Hard to imagine that the single word " feminist" was blacked out, when obviously there was not a request for no writing on shirts.
Would they have blacked it out if it said “Abercrombie”?
Maybe the school reached the same conclusion as you did: they could not read the text of the other tees. In case they could read the one that spelled Feminist, they absolutely have the right to remove the text if they consider subject to ANY negative perception. I do not think that the word or the teeshirt is offensive in the least, but that is not the point. The people who took the picture and own it have the right to REMOVE text (but not replace or add) if they consider it inadequate for THEIR purposes.
There are limits to self-expression when rules are set by others. In this case, the rules are the school’s and not a teenager who obviously was intent to … rock the boat. Insanely upset? Get used to abide to rules in real life! Or try a school that the presence of mind to require uniforms!
Fwiw, professional sports league around the globe have prohibited printed messages on UNDERGARMENTS and fined mercilessly adults who challenged the rules. That is just the way it is and there are no reasons for such as a drama.
Does this crap really need a journalistic shoulder to cry on? Did her life change because of the pic edit? She still did wear the teeshirt all day. Why would it be important for the text to be read in the picture?
I couldn’t read the text on the shirts, because on my ipad, the picture of the class was 3 inches long and about an inch wide.
I think the principal was working with a larger picture. Otherwise she would not have been able to read the word feminist. 
I’m sure the quality of the photo that they printed to hang in the school and to be reproduced in the yearbook was better than what I was seeing on my phone from a news site.
“Fwiw, professional sports league around the globe have prohibited printed messages on UNDERGARMENTS and fined mercilessly adults who challenged the rules. That is just the way it is and there are no reasons for such as a drama.”
That was done mainly to make sure no messages or logos of non-sponsoring companies would be snuck in. 'Cause Nike or Reebok or whoever sponsors the athlete would be upset, so plain tightie whities it is.
The principal’s action is probably unconstitutional, since it was clearly based on the content of the message–and that message doesn’t fit in any of the exceptions, even in the relaxed rules applicable in schools. If a principal can ban speech which he deems “controversial,” no matter what it is, but allow other speech, then there is no real free speech in the school at all.
If there was a rule that shirts with writing were not allowed, it wasn’t enforced against everybody. If I were the judge, and this case came before me, I wouldn’t even allow the question of whether “feminist” could be considered offensive to go to a jury.
How would that apply to the media? As in the recent example of Charrlie Hebdo, the US press mostly erased the signs from its coverage while the ROW, including Canada, did not censure the texts.
Is there not a difference between banning the wearing of texted clothing and editing an after the fact picture? How about most colleges photoshopping the contents of its view books to add minorities images and altering the skin colors of the students to show diversity.
Does this issue not involve the ownership of the data or media and not freedom of speech?
Xiggi, you need to find another cause. There is no defense for this.
I like this…
http://fox2now.com/2015/04/21/feminist-edited-out-of-students-shirt-in-class-picture/
The principal wanted to sell more pictures…
@Hunt wrote: “The principal’s action is probably unconstitutional, since it was clearly based on the content of the message–and that message doesn’t fit in any of the exceptions, even in the relaxed rules applicable in schools. If a principal can ban speech which he deems ‘controversial,’ no matter what it is, but allow other speech, then there is no real free speech in the school at all.”
Well, I’m not a lawyer, and (if I recall correctly) you are, and I agree wholeheartedly with you—but to understand the principal’s actions we have to think in terms of human thought processes here. I suspect that the principal was aware of the “Bong hits for Jesus” case (if there’s a principal out there who isn’t, there’s a problem, actually), and yes, that ruling was limited to student speech promoting illegal drug use, but I’m not alone in worrying that it opens the door to broader suppression of speech in the K–12 context. The principal was (IMO very, very wrongly) simply extending it to the next level.
Now, I do hope that the principal (and the photographer!) get slapped down hard, and the asymmetry between photoshopping one student’s shirt but not those of others is troubling to put it mildly, but the action is at a very real level understandable given the unsettled state of K–12 students’ speech rights.