Michigan high school students protest school’s removal of their friend’s memorial

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BELLEVUE, Mich. — Gavin Jex’s good friend Hunter Bailey took his life on April 1, just weeks after his 17th birthday. He didn’t get a chance to see him that day, nor the day before. And there’s so many things he wanted to tell him. So he and other students wrote them down.

“We wrote on a pole for our friend because he parked right next to it and he was there every single day,” said Jex during an interview across the street from Bellevue High School. “We just wanted to give our last words to him.”

Messages like “We’ll miss you” and “Fly high” were written all over the base of the pole where Bailey use to park. Jex said students and even a few teachers scribbled personalized messages during a vigil that over 250 people from the community attended during spring break. He noticed the school's superintendent, John Prescott, wasn't at the vigil. He also noticed, like many other students, that the messages were painted over the next day.

“The parents were livid, most of the teachers were extremely upset,” said Jex. “It helped us a lot in the moment and then they do that, it just takes it all away.”

Jex added that the school also installed a trail camera in the parking lot. It pointed directly at the pole but was immediately taken down it because parents were angered by it, he said. Nonetheless, students re-wrote their messages on the pole. And the next day, they were painted over again. So Jex approached the superintendent.

“I asked the superintendent what his reasoning was for painting it over,” said Jex about his 20-minute conversation with Prescott. “He just said that he needed an excuse to paint them anyways.”

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