GASTON COUNTY, N.C. -- Flipping through the pages of her very last high school yearbook something that’s supposed serve as a memory, was missing.
“Your senior yearbook is supposed to be what you show to your children, your grandchildren, and all this stuff but mines marked through,” Julianna Coon explained.
“My senior quote was marked out with a sharpie,” she said.
Not just in her yearbook, but all students attending Piedmont Charter in Gastonia.
“Kindergarten through 12th grade all got books that were marked through.”
So what was this potentially offensive quote?
“We’re letting you graduate early because we don’t want you here a full year.”
Julianna, who graduated in early in January, said it was a joke directed at her from a school administrator.
It’s not the first senior quote controversy hitting the Carolinas this season. In Rockingham, students yearbooks were taken back after one senior’s final farewell said: “build the wall.”
But Julianna explained hers was submitted last October and she was never told there was a problem.
“I could have easily changed it and picked another quote, but it’s the fact they just marked it out with a sharpie,” she said.
Now Julianna’s mother and other piedmont parents are making their voices heard on Facebook.
“She was crying. She was extremely upset. It was in poor taste in my opinion,” her mother Sue Ann Robb said.
Julianna said she was reimbursed $60 for the yearbook. But she’s still upset by what happened.
After talking with Julianna, NBC Charlotte called the school around 5 p.m. Friday to speak with the principal to learn more about what happened.
There was no answer, school officials had likely left for the day.