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A school district tried to ban a picture of a school-sponsored trap-shooting team from the yearbook because shotguns were displayed.
And then parents spoke up.
“Big Lake High School trap team will not be allowed to display proudly their team photo in the year book due to the kids displaying their sporting equipment,” Carrie Evens Wagener wrote on Facebook in late April. “These students’ guns are their equipment just as a hockey stick, tennis racket, a football, a baseball bat, ice skates, swim goggles — just as all these pieces of equipment are used, guns are used for trap.
“Sadly many people have died of a wasp sting — so does that mean Big Lakes hornets emblem with its stinger should be considered a weapon?”
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Wagener was reacting to the decision by Big Lake Public Schools Superintendent Steve Westerberg to remove the trap shooters’ picture from the yearbook, TV station KARE reported. Westerberg was enforcing a district policy that bars pictures of guns from the publication.
Not surprisingly, the decision was not very popular in the rural Minnesota community. Parents, trapshooting coach Rhonda Eckert and others complained, and Westerberg reversed his decision. District policy has been amended to allow the trap-shooting teams’ guns in the yearbook.
“This has spun into an amazing issue when it really shouldn’t have been,” Westerberg said.
He added, “You know, I really think the administration would’ve resolved this anyway, but certainly there’s been a lot of pressure and one would think that — but, let’s say three or four months ago, a request would’ve been made, process would’ve been followed, I think we would end up in the same spot.”
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