Just days after graduation, a yearbook at Berkeley High School in California has been recalled due to the discovery of a passage that refers to some students as “trash collators of tomorrow.” The Washington Post reports the line in question refers to students in the Academy of Medicine and Public Service – “a college preparatory program with a student body that is predominately African America and Latino.”
Instead of “trash collators” — a term some say is a reference to garbage collectors— the phrase was originally intended to say “innovators of tomorrow.”
“I feel like the garbage collector was in a way trying to attack colored people,” said Jace White, a senior at AMPS, told the CBS affiliate KPIX.
School officials have confirmed that the poorly worded change was “absolutely a prank,” and that they “plan to cover the offensive language with a sticker bearing the correct phrasing” on all returned yearbooks.
Members of the yearbook staff have apologized for not catching the error before it went to print, according to the Daily Californian.
School officials, meanwhile, told KPIX they have opened an investigation of the incident and hope to determine who is responsible for inserting the language into the annual keepsake.
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