Doug Clark: Cheney High relents on student’s yearbook photo that says ‘They Can’t Deport Us All’

File this one under the header: deja boo-boo – averted.

That’s a good thing. We can use all the happy endings we can get these days.

Up until noon Friday, however, Cheney High School was cruising for yet another public bruising over the second ludicrous rejection of a senior yearbook photo in a year.

Remember Michael Ferguson?

I wrote about the Cheney senior last January after a photograph of Ferguson, immersed fully clothed in a hot tub, was ruled unfit for print by yearbook censors.

I almost forgot. The lad was sporting a pair of bright pink eyeglass frames, too.

Lock up the children!

Well, the CHS arbiters of taste struck again.

Senior Jhonatan Quezada said yearbook adviser Leah Silvieus recently told him that his photo had been rejected after discussion with Principal Troy Heuett.

And what made this image so ax-worthy?

The photograph shows the senior sitting relaxed in an outdoor setting with a warm smile and …

“They Can’t Deport Us All” written on his dark T-shirt.

Due to the shirt’s political sentiment, Quezada would have to submit a new photo.

Which he did. Blessed with a wry sense of humor, the 17-year-old turned in a new image for yearbook posterity.

“I Just Look Illegal,” stated the slogan on Quezada’s new T-shirt.

“I haven’t heard anything about that one yet,” the young man told me shortly after we met last Thursday.

He won’t be hearing anything, as it turns out.

I’m happy to report that reason has prevailed in the case of Jhonatan Quezada.

“Upon further review we have decided that the (original) photo is appropriate for the yearbook publication,” concluded Cheney Public Schools Superintendent Robert Roettger in a brief prepared statement.

True, this decision was reached with knowledge that I was writing a column about Quezada and that I believed the student’s shirt fell well inside the category of acceptable free speech.

But Roettger, who is new to his position, struck me as a fair-minded administrator.

As much as I’d like to take credit, I honestly believe he would have come to this conclusion had Quezada gone to the superintendent instead of yours truly.

Roettger is also understandably concerned about supporting Silvieus and Heuett, as the first part of his statement indicated:

“In the past, some students have pushed the limits on senior photos in the yearbook,” he wrote.

“Last year the high school put in place standards to tighten things up. We believe the yearbook staff and principal acted with the best intentions.

“We also believe the student has a legitimate concern.”

I can’t disagree with any of that. Making free speech decisions in the high school setting is often like running naked through a cactus patch.

More than a few yearbook and school newspaper advisers have lost sleep over content anxieties.

Vulgarity. Overt sexuality. Promoting drugs or alcohol. Those are all valid reasons for playing censor.

Courts have also ruled that school officials have the right to play editor when it comes to things that are likely to cause violence or disrupt the educational process.

Any way you slice it, however, the photo of a Mexican kid wearing a “They Can’t Deport Us All” T-shirt should not fall into that category.

“I think that photo represents me,” said Quezada, who is naturally worried about deportation and wall-building issues as raised by the new president-elect.

That T-shirt slogan, by the way, was popularized by rapper Chingo Bling and the phrase is, of course, political and somewhat controversial.

The same way “Give Peace a Chance” was controversial back in those bloody Vietnam War days.

“I don’t think it’s bad,” said Quezada of his shirt. “It’s not vulgar or anything; it’s just an opinion.”

Quezada is a thoughtful young man.

He has a passion for boxing and works out regularly at Spokane’s BoxFit gym, where owner Chauncy Welliver calls him “A great kid who gives 100 percent.”

Quezada said he was 8 years old when his family moved from Mexico to America on visas. He has two older brothers. His father works construction. His mother has a cleaning business.

“Every nationality has its idiots,” he told me, adding that these are exceptions and not the rule.

“My parents are hardworking people. They moved their whole family, their culture” to the Cheney area to be near a relative. “I’ve watched their struggle.”

Quezada said he likes the Spokane area because “it’s calm and not too wild.” He was pleased to hear that his original photo will make the yearbook.

Someday, he added, he wants to become a U.S. citizen. The freedom to speak his mind and the freedom to express himself are virtues that Quezada finds endearing about this place he calls home.

“This is America,” said the student. “That’s what’s great about it.”

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.