Sydney Spies: too hot for school yearbook?

By Alafoto January-21-2012

A Colorado high school student named Sydney Spies was barred from using a provocative image as her yearbook photo but she now plans to buy a full page advertisement in the yearbook to get around the restriction. The yearbook editors at Durango High School in Colorado rejected Ms Spies’ photo to which she replied with, “Some people might think it’s a little bit sexy or inappropriate. But I think it’s artistic. I think it’s a good expression of who I am as a person. I’m a dancer, I’m trying to be a model, I really enjoy photography and I think that this is a good thing to represent me and I think they are taking away my freedom of expression.”

Check the photo that “violates” dress code:

Miki Spies, mother of Durango High School senior Sydney Spies, provided this photo of Sydney taken by Thru the Lens Photography. DHS administrators rejected Sydney’s photo for publication in the school’s yearbook.

“I feel like they aren’t allowing me to have my freedom of expression,” said Spies, 18. “I think the administration is wrong in this situation, and I don’t want this to happen to other people.”

Spies argued that until the school creates a formal policy about yearbook photos, it can’t tell her not to use her picture.

DHS Principal Diane Lashinsky and assistant principal LeAnne Garcia declined requests for comment about the issue. Spies said she has arranged a meeting with Lashinsky on Friday morning to discuss the photo.

A group of teens, joined by one mother, waved neon signs in front of Durango High School on Wednesday afternoon to protest the elimination of one of the girl’s senior photos from the yearbook.

Sydney Spies organized the protest after administrators told her the senior portrait she submitted would not be printed in the yearbook because her attire in the photo violated dress code, Spies said.

The high school requires that tops “fully cover the chest, back, abdomen and sides of the student.”

A photo Spies submitted for the yearbook shows her wearing a short yellow skirt with a black shawl that exposes her shoulders and midsection.

“It’s a little different from everyone else’s picture,” she said.

But she said it was the one that best represented her personality.

Spies argued that until the school creates a formal policy about yearbook photos, it can’t tell her not to use her picture.

Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center, said Spies’ allegations against the school’s administration may be valid.

According to Colorado Revised Statutes Section 22-1-120, “students of the public schools shall have the right to exercise freedom of speech and of the press” and that “no expression contained in a student publication, whether or not such publication is school-sponsored, shall be subject to prior restraint.”

Goldstein said, “Hopefully, it would come as no surprise that dress codes don’t trump state law.”

However, school administration can overrule the law under certain requirements, including obscenity.

Obscenity is defined as material that is offensive to the community and appeals to “morbid or shameful” interests, without social, literary or artistic value, Goldstein said.

Miki Spies, Sydney’s mother, joined her in the protest outside the high school.

“The yearbook adviser is saying she can’t use the picture; so the students are left with no voice in it,” Miki Spies said. “The law clearly states that it is the student’s right to decide.”

The mother and daughter are making arrangements with a civil lawyer in Denver to review the case, Miki Spies said.

Durango High School senior Sydney Spies, center, and her mother, Miki Spies, protest the elimination of Sydney Spies senior portrait from the school’s yearbook. At left is 2011 DHS graduate Alayna Woomer.

Miki Spies, Sydney’s mother, joined her in the protest outside the high school.

The mother and daughter are making arrangements with a civil lawyer in Denver to review the case, Miki Spies said.

After searching for Sydney Spies’ name on the Internet on Monday at the Steaming Bean Coffee Co., Kristy Alderton, 23, left; Nate Blancy, 22, second from left; Amy Brothers, 25, third from left; and Nicole Brothers, 19, are surprised at how many sites were following the dispute about Spies’ senior yearbook photo.

It’s not just in Durango coffee shops that Sydney Spies and her provocative yearbook photo are being discussed. Television viewers across the country are up on the controversy since Spies and her mother appeared Monday in a 6½-minute spot on the “Today Show.”

News of the dispute – which started when the photo Spies, an 18-year-old Durango High School student and aspiring model, submitted for her senior portrait was rejected – first appeared in The Durango Herald last week. As of Monday evening, stories about it on the Herald’s website had garnered more than 1 million page views.

In the photo, Spies is wearing a sheer yellow skirt and a black scarf that exposes her shoulders and midriff.

“This photo represents who I am. I want to be a model. I’m a dancer, and I feel like administration isn’t allowing me to show that,” Spies said in an interview last week.

This one second photo Spies submitted for the yearbook, in a sheer black dress, also was denied by student editors, who worried the racy photos were unprofessional.

During a sit-down interview with “Today Show” anchor Matt Lauer, Spies, seated with her mother, Miki Spies, accused the editors of changing their position under pressure from the administration.

Administrators and the yearbook adviser have denied influencing the students’ decision.

During the segment about Spies, which appeared as the NBC morning show celebrated its 60th anniversary, the student editors, in a recorded interview at DHS, said the photo wasn’t in keeping with the quality of the publication.

Spies told Lauer she is still holding out hope the yearbook staff will reverse its decision and let her use the picture, which she called “artistic.”

Miki Spies told Lauer she initially had reservations about submitting the photo.

“I asked her not to do it,” she said. “I said, ‘Sydney, really, is this the one you want?’”

But she said she came to accept the decision.

“When your child is spreading her wings, you just want to come alongside and support them. That’s what I’m doing as a mother,” she told Lauer.

Sydney Spies said she has been told the photo can still appear, but as a paid “senior advertisement,” which appear at the end of the yearbook.

Colorado high school senior Sydney Spies at NBC Studios for the ‘Today’ show to discuss her rejected her senior portrait New York City, USA – 09.01.12

A poll on the “Today Show” website asked viewers if they thought the photo was “too inappropriate” to go in the a yearbook. Seventy-seven percent, or 134,318 votes, indicted “yes” as of Monday evening.

Back in Durango, the appearance stirred much talk.

“It’s a sticky situation,” Spies’ boyfriend, Shane Gibson, 20, said. “This has turned into a lot more than any of us have expected.”

He added, “I personally believe it’s not too provocative to make it in the yearbook. It’s just like anyone else who is pictured with a football or a guitar – she’s an aspiring model.”

Thru the Lens photographer Benjamin Martinez, talks Monday in the store about his photo shoot with Sydney Spies. Martinez says if he had been asked, he would have recommended the Durango High School senior use a different photo for her senior portrait.

Benjamin Martinez, associate photographer and general manager of Thru the Lens Fine Portraits, photographed Spies’ now-famous photo and said the shoot included both traditional senior portraits and modeling portfolio pictures.

“We took some regular photos during the shoot that she could have chosen for the yearbook just as well as any of the images (that) they purchased from the session,” Martinez said.

The Spieses’ purchased the copyright release to the images from the photo shoot, leaving Thru the Lens unable to dictate what a customer does with the photos.

“If I knew at the time that she was planning on using that particular photo, I probably would have voiced my opinion that another one might have been better,” Martinez said.

As fate would have it, Elizabeth Samuell, owner of Thru the Lens Fine Portraits, is the mother of Erin Edblom, a student editor of the yearbook staff who voted against including Spies’ submitted photos, Martinez confirmed.

DHS Principal Diane Lashinsky has denied any involvement in removing the photo from the yearbook.

“I was aware of the (student) editors’ final decision not to print the picture, and I support their decision,” Lashinsky said.

“I think it’s really important that the process that the editorial staff went through to make the decision … isn’t at all connected with any individual person,” Lashinsky added.

“I’m not afraid to stand up for my rights unlike the editors of my yearbook. They could have stood up to the administration but they let themselves become convinced they always had a problem with it (first 4-1 yes vote negates that). But whatever. At 18 we can vote, serve in the military but we’re still afraid to stand up to the world.
Let me make this clear. This is not about a picture anymore. This is about standing up for our rights as citizens of the United States. Only 8 states have this law but every state should. It is called the Colorado Student Press Law, Section 22-1-120. It states that students have the right to print without influence from the administration. There was definitely influence involved. Even teachers from my high school stated that they KNEW there was influence. The Principle and editors admitted to having a meeting about my photo. The principle admitted to disagreeing that it should be in the yearbook and that it does not follow dress code. Only after the meeting happened, did the editors decision change against me. This is about our rights as people and not so much about this picture being appropriate or inappropriate for a yearbook. If the editors said no in the first place, this would never have been an issue and I would have changed my picture without argument.”
Sydney said on Facebook

***

The editors – Trujillo, Erin Edblom, Paige Shacklett, Alyssa Spencer and Brian Jaramillo – said they unanimously came to the decision not to run her submitted photo as a senior portrait. The editors said their decision was not because of dress code. “We are an award-winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional,” Jaramillo said.

First of all I’m in love with Sydney Spies. Strut that ass you little 18 year old minx. Work it! Work it! But to be honest this blog has nothing to do with her. Instead I’m flat out blown away by this quote;

“We are an award-winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the quality with something that can be seen as unprofessional,” Jaramillo said.

Is that not the biggest hardo statement in the history of the Stool? An award winning yearbook? BAHAHAHA! Somebody do me a favor and stick this asshole in a locker already! Bro you’re on the yearbook committee. Take it down like 900 levels. I just hope for the Yearbook staff’s sake they are taking the grenade here for the administration in exchange for letters of recommendation or something, because if not they are officially the biggest losers in the history of America. barstoolsports

SO WHAT TO DO?

We have some suggestions for Yearbook. If Sydney would like these photos we can offer them for free:

Just imagine how fine it can fit a Yearbook:

And another one:

We wish all the best for Sydney and for her School Administration!
This photo was rejected: