Do you remember what it’s like to be in middle school? Yeah, we’ve blocked out some of those memories too. What we do remember is that everyone wants to try to fit in and struggles with their mental health if they are in any way different. We remember insecurity as puberty kicks in. We remember how cruel kids can be.

Bullying is not okay, and a school should know that. We would never expect a school to in any way contribute to bullying, but that’s the way it appears when we look inside the recent yearbook from Hancock Middle School.

According to the school, “The yearbook is student led, student published and has, in the past, been an award winning yearbook. The yearbook is, however, sponsor and administrator supervised.” That means that some teacher, adult or administrator knew what kinds of questions and answers were inside the yearbook.

Besides pictures of students, the yearbook included questions that prompted students to name other students along with things they didn’t like about these students. For example, one of the questions is, “Which friend would you not invite on Spring Break?” The yearbook then lists answers where it shows the name of the students who answered the question and the name of the student they wouldn’t invite. Many students did more than just name names. They also includes why they wouldn’t invite certain friends, citing reasons like being “annoying” or “not fun.”

Parents are infuriated and rightly so. The school acknowledges that this kind of content inside a yearbook is unacceptable. “This yearbook should not have included the sensitive and inappropriate comments. Hancock Middle School has already taken measures to ensure that this never happens again.”

One person shared photos of the yearbook in a Facebook post but was careful to block out the names and pictures of the students in the book.

Many people commented on Tia Katrina’s post expressing their disgust that this yearbook was ever printed and handed out to students. One comment reads, “This is a pure disgrace. Creating hate and publicly humiliating kids! This is traumatizing to say the least and generating pure hate!”

Another person wrote, “Can u imagine being the parent to 1 of those children? You paid for them to have a yearbook only to find out your child was put down in it. Outrageous. Atrocious. I applaud the parents & the kid who said it was mean.”