Corona del Mar students picture no stereotypes

NEWPORT BEACH — A few weeks ago, Colby Seymore got a question that few high school students ever get — and that many would love to answer.

The Corona del Mar High School senior has a kind heart, he said, but at 6-feet, 3-inches tall, he can look a little imposing. So he was pleasantly surprised when a member of the school’s Human Relations Council approached him with an offer: Tell us a stereotype that people often pin on you, and we’ll explain to the rest of the school why it doesn’t fit.

“I feel I get some stereotyping because I’m big,” Colby, 17, said. “People sometimes see me and think I’m going to pick on them.”

On Thursday, Colby was among two dozen students whose pictures lined the campus quad. The Human Relations Council had taken their photos the week before and displayed them with statements from the students explaining their true natures. Colby’s picture, which showed him playfully lifting a smaller classmate, featured the words, “I may be a bear, but I’m not a bully.”

As students milled around the quad during break, they passed posters declaring “I may be Jewish, but I am not cheap,” “I may be a dancer, but I am not a ditz” and “I may be a GPA-monger, but I am not a desperate cutthroat,” among others. The title of the exhibit said it best: Labels Are for Clothes.

The Human Relations Council, a part of the school’s student body, conceived the project to celebrate differences around Martin Luther King Day. Senior Zan Margolis, the founder and chair of the council, said her group sought students that they imagined were the target of stereotypes and asked them to pose for pictures. Sometimes, the council got thrown a curve.

“Believe it or not, a lot of the students put down a different stereotype from the one we anticipated,” Zan, 18, said.

Freshman Blair Camarillo, observing the posters on Thursday, said the message was relevant at a school where cliques were common. “Most people, when they look at these people, they assume they’re a way they’re not,” Blair, 15, said. “I know some of these people and I know that’s not true.”