SEE NO EVIL
Newtown tribute coverup HS art a ‘problem’ to some
A MURAL at Newtown High School honoring victims of the Sandy Hook massacre has been censored by an administrator because it upset a few students.
The student-made painting depicted a dreamcatcher and featured 26 beads, representing each person at the Connecticut school murdered in the 2012 mass shooting.
The mural — designed in late 2013 by Lindsay Fuori, a former student of Newtown High and Sandy Hook Elementary School — had initially included the words “In loving memory” and “12-14-12,” the date of the tragedy.
Fuori covered up that text to address concerns from administrators, but that wasn’t enough.
In November, Newtown Superintendent Joseph Erardi announced he’d ordered the 10-foot-by-15-foot mural be completely covered with plasterboard.
“It’s important to be aware of the students still struggling with the shooting — I think we all are to some extent. But we need to help them, not shield them,” Fuori, 19, told the Daily News on Monday.
“Removing the mural clearly doesn’t remove feelings about the mural.”
The move resulted in an online petition with over 770 signatures demanding that the mural — which Fuori painted with her friend Mairin Hayes with the school’s blessing — be uncovered.
“Please help get our mural back, not just for us, but for those that we have lost throughout the country from school shootings,” the petition reads.
Initially, Fuori, said she was told one student was uncomfortable with the painting. School officials later told her it was a “small group,” she said.
Matthew Soto, whose sister Victoria died in the Sandy Hook massacre, said he was sad to learn the memorial had been censored.
“I understand both sides of the argument. It is very difficult for a lot of people to talk about it. At the same time, I think memorials are an important reminder of what happened,” Soto said.
“There were 26 lives taken. These memorials serve a purpose — not to forget. I would like to see it kept up. It happened. It’s important to not let those lives be lost in vain.”
In a November letter to Newtown High parents, Erardi said the decision to remove the mural was his alone and that he knew it would be controversial.
“Multiple sources brought to my attention that the mural was problematic with student recovery,” the superintendent wrote. “During the first quarter of the present school year, ongoing student recovery, through the lens of the learner and multiple families, remained problematic at a heightened level because of the mural.”
Erardi did not return phone calls Monday when asked to comment on his decision.
But Fuori, now a student at Boston University studying theater and psychology, found Erardi’s logic frustrating. She created the painting as part of a senior-year project on art therapy.
“The problem with that decision is it doesn’t address the other 1,800 students (at the school) and how it affects their healing,” she said.
“We have to help students actively deal with these feelings — not suppress them because they’ll just come up later.”
Adam Lanza, a mentally ill 20-year-old, killed 20 first-graders and six educators on Dec. 14, 2012, at the elementary school before killing himself.
The school building where the massacre took place and the home where Lanza killed his mother were both demolished.