California School Claims Its Own Yearbook is Child Porn

At Big Bear High School in San Bernardino County, somebody waited until the yearbook had been distributed before pointing out that one of the book’s photos featured a high school boy with his hand up his dance partner’s dress.

Rather than doing what school administrators would have done back in my day– which is completely freak out, you know, the usual way — the enlightened junta running Big Bear decided to take it to an extra-special hysterical freakout level, incite a moral panic and, while demanding that all students return their yearbooks, informing the all-hands ragamuffins that anyone who didn’t was in possession of child pornography, according to an L.A. Times story from yesterday:

The students appear in the background of the photo and “are not the intended focus of the photograph,” said Cindy Bachman, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department. But officials said it still constitutes child pornography under state and federal law.

According to federal law, any visual depiction of a minor “engaging in sexually explicit conduct” can be considered child pornography. Because of this, officials warn, anyone who still has the photograph could face a criminal charge of possession of child pornography.

[Link.]

Which makes the morals-minded school officials, by their own assertion, guilty of distribution of child pornography. Ironic, huh? In my day, they just gave out noisemakers before football games. The question is – is it still distribution of child pornography if you get all huffy and ask for it back? Is that, like, more of a loan of child pornography, rather than distribution? And if you act all huffy and pissed off and start threatening other people with federal prosecution, does that make it okay?

You can check the photo out here, if you want Delta Force kicking in your windows at three in the morning. I’m certainly not claiming it’s appropriate for a high school yearbook. But the thing is, the guy’s hand isn’t really even that far up her dress. Er…I’m told by people who have seen it, because of course I would never look, right?

A follow-up blog post at the L.A. Times blog fills in some details regarding how catastrophic the danger is to Western society. Headlined “Details Emerge,” which makes it sound like it’s a terrorist bombing, the Times blog post said, in part:

The school has offered to reimburse students who do not want their yearbooks back.

…which is very thoughtful of them…who would want your yearbook back after all the groping’s been excised? Oh, also:

[School officials] notified the Big Bear Sheriff’s Station, which is conducting an investigation…A detective has contacted both of the students in the photograph, Bachman said.

So maybe we’ll get that question answered about whether loaner CP is criminal, after all. In a later update (yes, this “scandal” needed three updates about it), the school officials released a defensive statement, which language nerds like me can have fun with:

Bear Valley Unified School District officials released a statement saying that after learning about the photograph, administrators “immediately stopped distribution and issued a recall of all yearbooks that had been dispersed,” and that a replacement page has been ordered.

[Link.]

I ask you, America, are these the people you want teaching your kids? People who don’t know the difference between “dispersed” and “distributed”? Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got a mullet in my high school yearbook, so I would dance like a pixie if I could see ever every single copy “dispersed.” But I believe they meant distributed.

Yes, I’m being jocular; yes, this “scandal” is some majorly stupid shit. Yes, child porn is a real threat, and that’s why it’s important to ridicule people who treat it like it’s not. Frankly, I don’t begrudge the school officials for wanting the yearbooks back — they have their careers to worry about, and I’m not going to claim it’s not appropriate for school officials to control what gets into the yearbook (though, presumably, they might have done that earlier if someone had been doing their job).

But calling the material “child porn” is killing a mosquito with a howitzer. It’s insulting to any child or teen who’s been the victim of actual exploitation.

Seriously, is this what we’ve turned into as a culture? That’s the first place we go when something like that happened? Not, “You dang nabbit kids! Quit screwin’ around!” or even “Teen pregnancy! Teen pregnancy! Teen pregnancy!” — but “Do as we say, or you’re guilty of possession of child pornography? For a photo of your classmate in your yearbook that we just gave you?” That’s productive.

I know I shouldn’t jump to conclusions that “this” is where “we” as a culture are now, twenty-five years after the Meese Commission. One half-baked school official might be responsible for that half-baked, hysterical threat. If anyone loses their job over this incident, I hope it’s the nut job who hauled out the “child porn” label to terrify high school kids into returning their yearbooks. That’s an insulting claim, and it’s revolting to consider that that’s how quickly someone who works with children starts throwing the CP-word around. When adults “Think of the Children,” the first thing they should think about is giving them a world free of panicked hysteria over phantom dangers, which goes hand-in-hand with ignoring the very real dangers kids face.

Adults should say “child porn” when they mean “child porn,” and “kids acting up” when they mean that. Otherwise, the terms we use to talk about misbehavior become meaningless. It equates an honest mistake and some garden-variety adolescent boundary-pushing with sexual victimization. Doing too much of that risks creating a future where a whole generation can’t tell the difference.

So nut up, Big Bear High School. Nut up and grow up.

Photo of Glee cast by Terry Richardson for GQ Magazine.