A charming boarding school in New Hampshire issued an apology to parents following the release of a yearbook containing students’ faces superimposed onto controversial images of ancient sculptures.
High Mowing School, located in Wilton, approximately 40 miles south of Concord, expressed regret in a letter to families, addressing the ‘inappropriate and tasteless’ nature of the images, as reported by WMUR.
The altered yearbook visuals featured students’ faces placed over potentially unsuitable images of both men and women, as well as statues.
According to the report, the school emphasized that this incident does not represent its core principles.
The institution plans to either remove the offending pages or reissue the yearbook with revised, appropriate imagery.
Online, commenters said it was ‘disturbing’ how the pictures were even printed in the first place.
‘Never thought to themselves, ‘huh these look a bit risqué for a high school year book, maybe I should check with the school?’? Hopefully it wasn’t too terrible for those who were photoshoppped [sic],’ one Facebook user wrote.
High Mowing is a private boarding school that serves students up through the 12th grade. High school tuition is $65,827 a year.
High Mowing School in Wilton apologized to parents after a yearbook was printed with students’ faces superimposed over inappropriate pictures of ancient statues, men and women
Head of school Katherine Meyer said High Mowing was ‘undertaking a full review of how these pages materialized and the approval of the processes that were in place at the time’
The New Hampshire school’s public calendar had said yearbooks would be distributed all day on Monday.
‘We are undertaking a full review of how these pages materialized and the approval of the processes that were in place at the time,’ Katherine Meyer, the head of school, told the outlet.
Meyer added: ‘We will use what we learn to update our policies and procedures around content development, formatting and approvals to ensure we have the necessary and appropriate checks in place to prevent something like this from happening again.’
No further details were immediately revealed as to what that might entail.
It was also not known what happened to the originally printed yearbooks with the supposedly inappropriately edited images.
Even though the images in question have not come to light, some community members reacted in dismay.
‘How does this happen at a school?’ a parent wrote on Facebook, saying he was ‘considering’ High Mowing.
The images in question have not been viewed by the Daily Mail.
The school said the students’ faces were edited onto inappropriate images of ancient statues (Photo of the statue of David by Michelangelo depicting an example of a Roman statue)
A High Mowing graduate from the early 1970s said it was ‘sad to hear this,’ though he admitted to not having any firsthand information himself.
‘I don’t know the details of the photos, but the staff and students for the most part are very liberal,’ he wrote.
The New Hampshire institution is a Waldorf school, meaning that a focus is placed on experiential learning connected to the child’s ‘social and emotional well–being.’
Another user blasted the New Hampshire boarding institution for its curriculum choices, but none of the classes mentioned would have related to the yearbook.
‘The school has circus arts and clowning as elective majors,’ he said. ‘What do you expect[?]’
But others defended the students, even calling their actions ‘good.’
‘Kids that organize these pranks and sabotage the yearbook with tasteless humor and hidden jokes are a long standing and time honored tradition in our culture,’ one user wrote. ‘Way to stick it to the man!’
Another added: ‘This sounds like a lot of boomer pearl-clutching, but its [sic] difficult to make a final judgement without seeing the pics.’
The matter has not been commented on yet by the Wilton Police Department, WMUR reported.
In January, High Mowing was involved in a separate controversy after the Wilton Police Department announced that a student had been charged with manufacturing child sexual abuse images and disseminating private sexual photos.
This was noted by some parents in light of the supposedly inappropriate yearbook photos.
Davi Prudencio, 18, was accused of secretly recording sexual encounters with another student at High Mowing, according to WMUR.
The high school became aware of the allegations on May 9, police claimed.
Prudencio, a Brazilian national, allegedly flew back to his home country just three days later, driven to the airport by a High Mowing employee.
Law enforcement said High Mowing contacted police ‘after conducting their internal investigation and facilitating the suspect’s departure to Brazil.’
When police asked the school about the delay in their outreach, the head of school said, ‘Not to be rude, but you guys are fourth on our list of notification,’ per the affidavit seen by the outlet.
The Daily Mail has reached out to High Mowing School and Wilton police for comment.