School Cuts Gay Student Photo from Yearbook

When Veronica Rodriguez opened Wesson Attendance Center's Yearbook on Friday, she didn't see her lesbian daughter Ceara Sturgis pictured or named in the senior-portrait section of the yearbook. The latest blow came after a long battle with school officials to include a photo of her daughter wearing a tuxedo in the school's 2010 yearbook. She called the Jackson Free Press Sunday with her disappointing news.

"They didn't even put her name in it," Sturgis' mother Veronica Rodriguez said of the yearbook's senior section. "I was so furious when she told me about it. Ceara started crying and I told her to suck it up. Is that not pathetic for them to do that? Yet again, they have crapped on her and made her feel alienated."

Sturgis' baby picture did appear in pages following the portrait pages with her name beside it, Rodriguez told the Jackson Free Press. She was also pictured several times in other sections of the yearbook, in soccer-team photographs, National Honor Society and other sections. "If she wasn't in those groups, she wouldn't be there," her mother said. A photograph her mother took of her in her tuxedo appears on a page purchased by her family. "I don't think there was anything they could do about that; I purchased that," Rodriguez said of the bought senior page.

Sturgis and her mother commissioned the Mississippi ACLU to protest officials' October 2009 decision not to allow Sturgis' photo to appear in the senior yearbook because she chose to wear a tuxedo instead of a dress. The ACLU wrote an October letter demanding officials use Sturgis' submitted photo in the yearbook, but Copiah County School District officials refused. Still, Rodriguez said she expected her daughter to at least be named on the senior page, perhaps with a "photo unavailable" box. What she discovered on Friday, when the yearbook came in, was that the school had refused to acknowledge her entirely on the senior pages.

"It's like she's nobody there, even though she's gone to school there for 12 years. ... They've got kids in the book that have been busted for drugs. There's even a picture of one of the seniors who dropped out of school," Rodriguez said.

"I don't get it. Ceara is a top student. Why would they do this to her?"

Copiah County School District spokeswoman Martha Traxler refused to comment on the school's reason for excluding Sturgis from the senior page, and referred all questions to Copiah County attorney Olen Bryant Jr. Bryant did not immediately return calls.