A high school senior’s portrait was excluded from a Stockton high school yearbook after she opted to wear a suit instead of a dress, the teenager said.
Crystal Cumplido told told KTXL-TV that she was upset when she found out that her senior portrait was not published in Lincoln High School’s yearbook.
Smiling ear-to-ear, dressed in a black suit and red bow tie, Cumplido looks effervescent in her high school senior portrait.
“Because that’s what I’m comfortable with,” she said in an interview on Friday.
But the young woman said when she got her yearbook it’s what wasn’t there that upset her.
“It’s like I didn’t even exist in Lincoln,” she said.
Cumplido claimed her portrait wasn’t included in Lincoln High School’s yearbook because of a policy that is now under review.
She added that she’s been trying to get answers from high school administrators and recounted what her assistant principal explained to her.
“He told me that I wasn’t following policy, that girls are supposed to wear the black, little shirt over whatever,” Cumplido said.
In a separate interview, Superintendent Tom Uslan of Lincoln Unified School District described the exclusion as an oversight that should not have happened.
“I believe that they have been wronged in this situation and we will do everything possible to protect this student,” Uslan said.
Cumplido said she’s simply asking for the school to republish her yearbook and the library’s yearbook with her senior portrait.
Uslan said district officials will reach out to the Cumplido family and are willing to go so far as to republish the entire school’s yearbook.
“Well, it was an inexcusable error that is inconsistent with our school district policies,” Uslan said.
For the teen who is set to graduate in days, the book is more than just her picture.
“I was angry, I was frustrated. I just wanted to know why, you know,” she said.
A version of this article was originally published by KTXL-TV and was distributed by the Tribune Media Wire.