Seniors at Los Osos High School in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., who flicked through the 2016 yearbook to the page of classmate Bayan Zehlif were surprised to see a different name under her picture: Isis Phillips.
Problem is, it’s not her name. Susan Petrocelli, principal of the school outside Los Angeles, apologized on Twitter for the “misprint,” adding that it would investigate how the blunder happened.
I guess I'm Isis in the yearbook… pic.twitter.com/hMc0dVu8dM
— βΔYΔΠ (@BayanZehlif) May 7, 2016
But Zhelif wasn’t buying it. She tweeted and posted the picture to her Facebook page—in which she’s seen sporting an Islamic headscarf or ‘hijab’— saying that she was “hurt and embarrassed” by the incident. Zhelif, who is of Palestinian descent, also criticized the school for suggesting that the mistake was merely a typo.
https://twitter.com/LosOsosHigh/status/729121904125042688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
In an expression of solidarity, her classmates started correcting the photo themselves and asked others to do the same with their yearbooks.
If everyone could do this that would be lovely❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/gzCtcjhFGx
— Kat (@katarinabarbour) May 7, 2016
One of the students working on the yearbook later confirmed that a student by the name of Isis Phillips used to attend Los Osos before transferring earlier in the year, according to a report in the New York Daily News. Isis, known to most Americans as the acronym for the terrorist group Islamic state of Iraq and Syria, also happens to be the Egyptian goddess of love and marriage, and a pretty popular name in America.
— C20 (@c20c20c20) May 7, 2016
So was the yearbook mislabeling a simple human error or a conscious slur?
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, called for a thorough investigation in a statement issued on Sunday.
“We join with the family in their concern about a possible bias motive for this incident and in the deep concern for their daughter’s safety as a result of being falsely labelled as a member of a terrorist group” said CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush.
“No student should have to face the humiliation of being associated with a group as reprehensible as ISIS.”
Only 287 yearbooks have been released to the senior class so far. The rest of the yearbooks have been locked away by the school, which has over 3,000 students.
