Carmel High’s ‘Cutest Couple’ Gains Recognition
On Wednesday, May 29, Carmel High School seniors Dylan Meehan and Brad Taylor learned they had been named the “Cutest Couple” in the superlative section of the high school yearbook. They were excited – “Winning any superlative is exciting,” Meehan said – and having effected a change in the voting process to make same-sex couples eligible was an added source of pride. They never thought less than a week later, people from across the world would be recognizing their accomplishment.
Chelsea Blaney, a friend of the couple, posted a photo of the superlative to Tumblr, a microblogging platform, days after the yearbook was published and it quickly went viral. Soon, everyone from The Huffington Post to Fox News was running with their story.
“You wouldn’t expect a small town to be getting this much news attention over a superlative,” Meehan told The Putnam Examiner. “It was exciting, interesting and nerve-wracking at the same time.”
Meehan and Taylor, who will both be attending New York University in the fall, began dating a year ago.
“We were out to our family when we started dating, and we came out to the school right before school started in September,” Meehan said. They found their classmates supportive and said, for the most part, they were viewed the same as opposite-sex couples.
When voting began for the senior superlatives this year, the two boys discovered the “Cutest Couple” category allowed students to pick one person from a list of boys and one from a list of girls, meaning same-sex couples would be ineligible. This irked friends of Meehan and Taylor, who took their cause to the yearbook committee.
“A bunch of our friends and family wrote to them, how it’s not fair that we can’t run like everybody else can,” Taylor recalled. “We told them that we really would like to run. We tried to be very civil about it.”
Vin Colucci, the school’s yearbook advisor, said the school had switched from a paper ballot to an online vote this year for superlatives, and when students brought their concern to his attention he changed the voting system so students could vote for any two classmates.
Taylor and Meehan recalled awaiting the results, though Colucci said the final tally was not close.
“There were other couples that were also really cute,” Taylor said. “We really wanted to win though.”
Colucci went to Carmel High School Principal Kevin Carroll to see if there was any issue awarding the superlative to a same-sex couple and after checking with Meehan and Taylor, as well as their parents, both agreed there was not.
“These are both high-level kids who do excellent work in their classes,” said Carroll. “They’re popular. They’re motivated.”
Their selection didn’t generate much buzz when the yearbooks were released. The story blew up after Blaney’s online post, which was shared more than 100,000 times. Last Monday, Carroll’s office began receiving calls and by Wednesday The Journal News, The Huffington Post, CNN and Fox News had all published stories on the couple.
“We are extremely shocked,” said Taylor. “We never expected it to get this big, where people from Colorado, California and Texas are messaging us saying, ‘You know you’re on the news, right?'”
Meehan said people from as far as Brazil, the UK and Australia have heard the story and called the two students an inspiration. They haven’t given much thought to getting involved in LGBT causes, but would be open to it if they are asked.
Carroll noted the couple’s acceptance in the school community and said it speaks to the culture at the school.
“For the most part these are non-issues in the school,” he said. “You still see reports of gay men being beat up and stuff like that, but I think these boys felt that the school is a safe environment and they felt comfortable doing that.”
Also at play, Carroll continued, is a wider acceptance of same-sex relationships than there’s been in years past.
“It don’t think it could have happened ten years ago,” he acknowledged.
David Juhren, the executive director of The LOFT, a community center for the gay community in the lower Hudson Valley, agreed with Carroll on that point. Meehan and Taylor’s acceptance in their school is part of a generational divide on gay rights, he said, noting Putnam’s rightward tilt politically.
“It basically shows that even in a community that is a bit more red than blue, it is the younger generation that is a bit more understanding of LGBT rights and the acceptance of same-sex couples like these two young gentlemen,” Juhren said. “Even in the past 10 years, our community has grown in acceptance.”
While both Meehan and Taylor will be attending NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, they said going to college together was not planned. Meehan is interested in studying theater, German and psychology while Taylor’s interests are theater, medicine and business.
