Ventura High School Yearbook Pictures

Calif. High School Recalls Yearbooks After They're Printed with Inappropriate Superlatives

Ventura High School officials apologized for the incident, which featured superlatives like "Most Likely to Be Canceled" and "Most Likely to Get COVID Twice"

A California high school will reprint and redistribute its yearbooks after an apparent oversight led to the printing of several inappropriate superlatives, including "Most Likely to Get Canceled" and "Most Likely to Get COVID Twice."

Yearbooks were distributed on Thursday to Ventura High School seniors — including Morgan Jensen, who was surprised to see she'd been named "Best Dancer" and "Most Likely to Be a TV Star."

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"She was like, 'This is so random, I'm not a dancer,'" her mother, Stephanie Tindall, tells PEOPLE. "So she posted it on her Snapchat and somebody responded and said, 'Those are stickers, peel it off.' And so she peeled off the stickers."

Underneath, Morgan was shocked to find that the superlatives she was baffled to have won were actually just adhesives covering up the categories she and several other students — including one who no longer attends Ventura High — had actually won: "Most Likely to Get COVID Twice" and "Most Likely to Be Canceled."

Ventura High School

Ventura High School

| Credit: Google Maps

"She was shocked," says Tindall. "I couldn't believe it because she's dealt with some bullying throughout the years… I told Morgan, 'I'm very grateful you are as strong as you are,' because this could've been something that could've caused a kid to end their life. It's just not right. It's a deeper level of bullying that happened."

"COVID is obviously a real thing, and people have lost family members, so I don't think that's something that should be in a yearbook," Morgan, 17, added to KABC. "And the canceled one, I've already been bullied for this type of thing… so it wasn't really funny."

In a statement shared with PEOPLE, a spokesperson for the Ventura Unified School District apologized to the students and families affected by the offensive superlatives, and said the $100 yearbooks would be reprinted and reissued.

"In addition, we will conduct training for all Principals and District staff that oversee the yearbook and journalism groups," the statement read. "Ventura Unified is dedicated to ensuring we provide a positive environment for all students, and will continue to strive to do so."

Tindall says that after speaking with Ventura High School Principal Carlos Cohen, she learned that the inappropriate superlatives had somehow been missed before the yearbooks were sent to print, but were noticed once they arrived. She says she was told that school officials ordered the adhesives to place over them, and "tested" the stickers before giving the books to students.

"This has been my outrage as a parent — at this point, somebody should've thought, 'Let's go ahead and reprint this. Let's not just cover it up with a sticker,'" Tindall says. "And there's been no accountability. The principal tells me there's going to be more training, there'll be more student oversight. But who's accountable for this?"

Though Tindall remains upset over the actual superlative, she says that in an even more upsetting turn, Morgan has faced additional bullying from her peers since speaking out. Classmates have called her "soft" and expressed anger over having to return their yearbooks, she says.

"Yes, what happened at school never should have happened. But the fact that there's bullying going on… My daughter's terrified for her graduation on Thursday. She's like, 'Am I going to get booed?'" says Tindall. "It's absolutely terrible what's been done to them, and what they're having to go through with their senior year."

Ventura High School Yearbook Pictures

Source: https://people.com/human-interest/calif-high-school-recalls-yearbooks-print-inappropriate-superlatives-so-outraged/

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