Ariz. School Yanks Poster Some Students Find Offensive
“Hanging of the poster was inappropriate and very poor judgment."
— -- Officials removed a controversial poster from the Desert Ridge High School library in Mesa, Arizona, Thursday after some students took offense at its message that appears to be a humorous attempt to highlight the school’s dress code.
“I don’t get offended easily, but this definitely crossed the line for me,” senior Alissa Adams, 18, told ABC News.
The poster, which had a photo and cartoons attached, claimed that girls who came to school “looking pretty cute” made boys see them as “meat, and it’s distracting.” It went on to say that boys would “make lousy grades” as a result, but the girls “end up with one of them anyways because he thought you looked HOT!”
It suggested that the distractions posed by a girl left a boy “underemployed because he learned nothing in school,” leaving the girl to support him.
When Adams first saw the poster a couple days ago, she took a pen and wrote on the bottom, “So it’s the girls fault, right? #feminism,” she said.
Adams said she approached the librarian who put up the poster, but she declined to remove it, saying that Adams was the only person who took offense. Later that day, she said, another student alerted the principal, who directed the librarian to remove it.
“Hanging of the poster was inappropriate and very poor judgment on behalf of the librarian,” school spokeswoman Irene Mahoney Paige said in a statement. “It is not reflective of the spirit and community of Desert Ridge High School or the Gilbert Public Schools District.”
School officials said they had no idea who created the poster, only that the librarian put it up after she found it lying around. The school district declined to make the librarian available for comment.
Even after it was removed, Adams and other students voiced concern about the message.
“They shouldn’t have compared boys to animals and girls as meat,” Adams said. “They could’ve done it better.”