BANGOR, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- A quote attributed to Adolf Hitler was printed in Bangor High School’s 2016 yearbook.
It says "anyone who sees and paints a sky green and the fields blue ought to be sterilized” and appears with the picture of a BHS senior.
Administrators are calling the quote’s appearance “regrettable” and had the yearbook’s publisher put stickers over most of the books before they were given to students.
However, students who got their yearbooks early don’t have the stickers, though they will be mailed home to them. The President of Bangor High's Class of 2016, Nick Danby calls the situation “disappointing.” He says students think this was some kind of dare or joke by one of their classmates.
Bangor’s superintendent of schools, Dr. Betsy Webb did not directly address the quote issue herself, and instead sent NEWS CENTER a statement from the principal of Bangor High School.
It says the Hitler reference wasn't discovered until last Thursday and he and other administrators have determined it made it into the yearbook because of a problem with the timeline for quote submission.
Danby thinks students working on the yearbook need more time to put it together to catch problems like this and the quote doesn't represent the views of most students at the school.
“I've never heard someone yell an Adolf Hitler quote or Stalin or Mussolini quote, any fascist quote in the hallways and I think really at the core of this it's just a joke, a bad joke that was poorly timed and poorly executed,” he said.