Trevor May graduated last month with honors -- and a potentially toxic reputation -- after writing a column in Sprayberry High School's student newspaper satirizing critics of President Barack Obama.
Google his name and you'll find plenty of people -- adults, mostly -- branding the 18-year-old Marietta resident as a racist..
"There were [white supremacist] blogs taking my side," May said. . "That was the most depressing thing out of all this."
May's column "Top 20 Reasons Why Obama Should Not Get Re-Elected," published April 25, mixed some of the more sensational allegations leveled against the president with his own intentionally absurd observations, such as, "His dog is ugly" and "He doesn't have a mistress."
There were also intentional contradictions -- "He's a Nazi. He's a Zionist." -- that May assumed illustrated his point.
But it seems many people didn't get past the first item: "He's black."
"This was something I tried to write to defame racists yet it was being thrown in my face like I was the bigot," said May, whose 17th reason was, "He's a white supremacist." "I really thought people would find this funny. I was upset people didn't get it."
Sprayberry parent Danisha Crummie, who leaked the story to local media outlets after saying she did not receive a satisfactory response from officials at the Cobb County school, was among those who objected to the column, which appeared in The Stinger's annual satirical insert, The Zinger.
The night the paper was distributed, Crummie took to Twitter: #Sprayberry is about to have a problem with me if they don't address this NOW."
May, who doesn't have a Twitter account, was notified by friends of the burgeoning controversy. His immediate reaction was "stupid," he admits, and it proved costly.
" Yea, I wrote the Obama article," the Georgia Merit Scholar wrote on Facebook, using the same pen name, Uncle Sam, American Extraordinaire, attached to his column. "If you don’t agree with it then you can go to hell with that monkey man himself, there’s such a thing called free speech and I exercised my constitutional right to express it.”
"I was doing a satirical rebuke of what I perceived was misguided backlash," May explained. "If I had known the sheer intensity of the backlash, I wouldn't have done it."
The next morning, Crummie was talking about the column on V-103. Television interviews would follow.
I don't think there is any excuse for what was done and I don't think that an administrator should have approved any such article to be printed in a school paper," Crummie told Channel 2 Action News. "I think it divides the students. It teaches them to dislike one another. It wasn't appropriate at all."
The Stinger's staff was called into the assistant principal's office, where, according to May, they were told the column was "just not funny." They were ordered to issue an apology, which was posted on the school's website. Additional copies of the paper were not distributed.
"The article … was meant to be a comedic take on the media’s comments on the President," the statement read. "Satire is the use of humor, irony or exaggeration to poke fun at certain parts of society. We realize that this did not come off as we intended, and we sincerely apologize for offending anyone.”
May said he alerted school officials about his Facebook post, which he subsequently deleted. Soon after, he was told he would be suspended for two days for using social media to disrupt the school.
"That was blatantly unconstitutional," said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center. "In order for them to punish a student they would have to prove there was some direct threat of violence against the school or a specific student."
May notes that other students, responding on Facebook to his column, escaped punishment despite labeling him a gay slur.
Cobb school officials did not respond to requests for comment. In April, school spokesman Jay Dillon said the column should not have been published.
"The article was reviewed by the faculty adviser and the rest of the newspaper staff," said Dillon, adding the column was a "poor attempt at humor." "But the newspaper staff and adviser didn't seek an administrator's input on the sensitive material."
LoMonte said Sprayberry overstepped its bounds.
"The Supreme Court has been very clear that schools don't have a right to censor just because they don't like the content," he said. "Their authority is not unlimited."
May, who will be attending the University of Georgia, said he didn't fight the suspension because he feared the teacher who approved the column might lose her job. There were also rumors he would not be allowed to graduate with his class.
He worries that the controversy will haunt him when he applies for job or internships.
"Fortunately the Philadelphia Phillies have a minor league pitcher who shares my name," May said, "so he turns up first on Google. But I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I'll never be able to run for office."
This fall he'll vote for the first time.
"My mother and father voted for Obama four years ago," he said. "I plan on doing the same in November."
May appreciates the irony, even if others don't.
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