COBB COUNTY, GA (CBS ATLANTA) -
A Cobb County high school newspaper is under fire for what some are calling an offensive article.
Students at Sprayberry High School published an article entitled Top Twenty Reasons Why Obama Should Not Get Re-Elected in their school newspaper's April Fool's Day edition.
The article listed reasons such as, "He's black," "He's half-white," "He is a Nazi," and "His dog is ugly."
Cobb County Schools spokesman, Jay Dillon, said the students and teacher exercised poor judgment in printing the article.
"There is a place for satire. We want
our kids to know that, but when it crosses a certain line of interpretation you
have to have better judgment. In this case they didn't," said Dillon.
After the article began to circulate outside the school on Thursday, a response to the article was posted on the high school's website, which read:
"Recently, the Sprayberry newspaper, The Stinger, published an article trying to humorously comment on the President. In regards to the Obama article, we would like to say that the article was meant as a piece of satire. The article was published in our April Fool's section, The Zinger, of the newspaper and was meant to be a comedic take on the media's comments on the President. Satire is the use of humor, irony or exaggeration to poke fun at certain parts of society. We realize that this did not come off as we intended, and we sincerely apologize for offending anyone."
CBS Atlanta News spoke with parents and students who attend Sprayberry High School to get their take on the controversial article.
Danisha Crummie, a parent, said that the attempt at satire was in bad taste.
"I just couldn't believe that it was printed in the school paper," she said.
Tom, another parent who didn't want to give his last name, agreed with Crummie.
"I'm disappointed that they would allow anything like this to be published," he said.
The students that CBS Atlanta News spoke with didn't have as strong of an opinion about the article, and saw both the humor - and shame - in the article.
"I was offended by the first line because he's black," said Sprayberry student Ambur Leggett. "I wasn't offended by the complete article because it's a satire."
Fellow student Maurae Prince agreed with Leggett.
"(The author) was irresponsible, but it shouldn't have been taken to this level at all," Prince said.
Crummie first reacted to the article on the social media site Twitter. She tweeted, "#Sprayberry
is about to have a problem with me if they don't address this NOW."
The article's author, Trevor May,
responded, "Yea, I wrote the Obama article. If you don't agree with it then you
can go to hell with that monkey man himself, there's such a thing called free
speech and I exercised my constitutional right to express it."
Dillon said the district will not take May's comments lightly.
"The school will look at that very seriously. If it was
one in particular who made one particular comment. It will be addressed on its
own," said Dillon.
Dillon said a supervisor in the student's class approved the article. He said no disciplinary action has been taken. The incident is being investigated.
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