Exeter students petition to honor classmates who died in yearbook: Here's why school said no
EXETER — Amanda Varney hoped her senior yearbook could honor three classmates who died before they got to graduate with a special page including photos, names and memories.
Concerns around teen suicide have altered those plans for the Exeter High School senior and her classmates working on the yearbook, however. Now a different memorial page with no names, pictures or information about any of the three who died has been approved for the yearbook, which will be available for students to pick up this May.
The classmates who died were Natalie Fox, Adam Ennaciri and Isabelle Rice. Ennaciri died of a heart attack at age 14 in 2020, according to his family. Rice died at 15 in 2021 from injuries in a car crash. Fox died by suicide at age 13 in 2018, which led the school's principal to reject the yearbook request, according to Varney and her classmates. Wednesday, they said they received approval for the general memorial page with no reference to those who died, instead getting a recommendation to use words from a poem or song in their honor.
“It’s not what we wanted, but it’s something,” said Skyla West, one of Varney’s friends advocating for the memorial page. “Obviously we wanted the pictures and names, but it’s better than nothing.”
The decision for the general memorial page followed a petition Varney launched on Change.org calling attention to her school rejecting a proposal to honor the three classmates.
“We are hoping that we can get students, families, and other community members on board to help support our goal of showing our love, respect, and support to those who are no longer with us,” Varney wrote in the petition.
Varney wrote the goal of this petition “is not to guarantee that a change is made, but rather to show awareness to a situation that impacts many of our students and to hopefully show that there are people in support of this addition to the yearbook.”
Now, more than 3,500 signatures have been compiled on the petition with signers leaving comments supporting Varney and saying their classmates should “not be forgotten.” The petition has been signed and shared by prominent community members and officials.
“Sharing because it matters!” the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office posted on Facebook with a link to the petition.
Administrators at SAU 16 say dealing with teen deaths and suicide in a yearbook post can have negative consequences in the community, however. Exeter High School Principal Michael Monahan said he had those concerns when he rejected the request to include the names and faces of any students in the memorial.
“The broader impacts it could have on people,” Monahan said. “We’re just trying to not have anything go out in the yearbook that might impact people in a negative way.”
Remembering three friends
Varney and West along with friends Abby Moriarty and Ellie Tuttle, said the memories of their three friends who died are held dearly. Varney said she was close with Isabelle Rice, who died in a car crash. Rice was also remembered by her teammates on the EHS field hockey team, and Varney said honoring her in the yearbook was important.
Ennaciri was 14 when he died in 2020, and the community raised $13,000 through a GoFundMe page that year to assist his family. A freshman at EHS at the time, Moriarty and West said they both enjoyed Ennaciri at their lunch table in middle school and have missed him.
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West said she was close with Fox, who died by suicide, and has since remained close with Fox’s father. Fox’s mother, Marcia Barbosa, said at the time of her death in 2018 that depression was a “silent killer” and said she did not want her daughter’s suicide to be “swept under the rug.”
“I’m really close with her dad,” West said. “I just wanted to do something for him and the other families to make them feel like they’re still here and involved and remembered by everybody.”
Moriarty said their intent was not to explain on the page how each student died, but rather share their pictures and happy memories. They said they were not planning to create the page until they had the consent of each family, and they had received approval from Fox’s and Rice's families. Ennaciri's mother, Jaclynne, reached Tuesday, said she would "absolutely be OK" with her son being included in the yearbook.
The yearbook is created by students but follows school guidelines. It's a student club led by a faculty member who serves as an adviser, according to the students. West said she reached out to the principal earlier in the school year about creating the page in hopes of getting approval. She said she met with him twice, and both times she said she was told “it wasn’t a yes, it wasn’t a no,” and that he would get back to her.
West, however, said Monahan finally rejected the idea. She said their yearbook adviser told them the principal had spoken with him and the request was not approved.
Upon hearing the decision, Varney immediately felt called to take the issue to the public in the form of a petition. She posted it with the hope of seeing maybe a couple of hundred responses. She was surprised when it “blew up,” she said. The list of people who signed it included people she knew that had moved out of town and people who lived as far away as Florida.
“It was really, really, really touching,” Varney said. “I got a lot of people that said, ‘I’m proud of you for standing up.’”
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School officials, mental health advocates careful with memorializing suicide
SAU 16 administrators say the issue of suicide is delicate when it comes to discussion, as well as platforms so public and wide-reaching as a school yearbook. SAU 16 Superintendent David Ryan said the school district follows guidelines set out by organizations like the National Association of School Psychologists, pointing to a passage in its School Crisis Prevention Intervention Training Curriculum.
The passage on “memorials after a suicide” advises that “memorials following a suicide may glamorize death or communicate that suicide is an appropriate or desired response to stress.” It states school staff should discourage “full-page dedications in a yearbook,” as well as other memorials like whole-school assemblies, scholarships or flying a flag at half-mast.
“With regard to recognizing and/or memorializing students who die by suicide, we subscribe to the research and guidance of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Seacoast Mental Health Center, and the National Association of School Psychologists,” Ryan said in a statement Tuesday. “In any and all cases involving the loss of the child, we are deeply saddened and pained regardless of the reason.”
Elaine de Mello, director of suicide prevention services at NAMI NH, said there is no easy answer to addressing the memories of students following a suicide. However, she said that best practices for schools recommend that school-based memorials typically be temporary so that they do not cast a shadow that impacts students in future classes.
De Mello said national experts express concerns that permanent memorials on school property like park benches or the planting of trees could create a lasting reminder of a traumatic loss that can increase risk for vulnerable students. Permanent memorials, she said, are most suited at places like cemeteries where people can go to grieve and remember loved ones. She said schools can offer a time-limited way to honor someone who dies and then help students to heal, find hope and invest in their future.
“One of the things we don’t want to do is negatively affect more students than would otherwise be impacted,” de Mello said.
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Students hoped petition would make a difference
West, Moriarty, Tuttle and Varney said it was important they find a way to honor their classmates in the yearbook before they run out of time. Students typically pick up their yearbooks in May, they said, meaning time is short to make decisions on what to do with the open page.
Tuttle said their intent in speaking out was not to draw negative attention to their principal.
“I don’t want this to fall 100% on him being the villain in this,” Tuttle said.
Monahan said he appreciates the work that the yearbook club students have done and recognizes their intent is good.
"I appreciate the activism of kids and their believing in something, and they’re not doing this from a bad place,” Monahan said.
Varney said she still struggles to understand the approach their principal has taken. She said she has been involved in Connor's Climb, an organization started by Exeter mother Tara Ball whose son Connor died by suicide in 2011.
"Being someone who's been part of Connor's Climb for so long," Varney said, "The best way to avoid suicide and prevent suicide is to talk about it."
West said she still hopes the petition can have an impact on the bigger conversation about how to address suicide in a public forum like the yearbook.
“I hope it just brought awareness to everybody,” West said, “Like the School Board and the people above Monahan that are making it so that this can’t happen.”
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Exeter High students petition to honor classmates who died in yearbook
