School bans 'Bye, Felicia' T-shirts honoring dead students after family members call them 'disgraceful'
A Mississippi superintendent is taking action after high school students sparked controversy by wearing custom T-shirts bearing the phrase “Bye, Felicia” as well as the names of three seniors who died this year. Made popular by the 1995 Ice Cube film Friday, the dismissive quote was seen as inappropriate and disrespectful to the late students.
The SunHerald newspaper in Biloxi reports that administrators at Pascagoula High School in Pascagoula, Miss., helped students design the senior class shirts, which included the names of Blayze M. Broadus, Jonathan McCommon and Matthew Russell Parker as a memorial.
But the inclusion of “Bye, Felicia” has been blasted as flippant and “disgraceful,” to quote one grieving family member.
“I’m just crushed by this,” Vicki Broadus, grandmother and caregiver of Blayze, told the paper. “What else could they do? What other pain does a parent have to go through? You just begin to stop crying every day and then some idiot comes up with something like this. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it. This is just disgraceful.”
Just a day after the shirts were distributed last Thursday, Pascagoula School Superintendent Wayne Rodolfich announced they would be banned from school grounds and school functions in response to the outcry.
“The names on the back of the shirts, I believe, were well-intentioned,” Rodolfich said. “I think that was a way to honor those students, but when you look at the front of the shirt and the back of the shirt, it was not appropriate.”
He added that the design that was initially approved did not include the memorial to Broadus, McCommon and Parker. The “Bye, Felicia” shirts will be replaced by ones with a new design, though it’s unclear if the young men will be honored on them.
“It was added outside of the protocol of the school district,” Rodolfich said. “The school district is going to let the students get new senior shirts that are in good taste. The school district is going to pay for it.”
Vicki Broadus did not immediately respond to Yahoo Lifestyle’s request for comment.
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