Monessen Middle School Puzzle: ‘Fifty Shades Of Grey’ Sparks Controversy

Five students at Monessen Middle School in Pennsylvania were mistakenly given search puzzles based on Fifty Shades of Grey, which included terms such as “leather cuffs” and “spanking.”

The school district’s superintended, Leanne Spazak, issued a statement on Thursday in which she said that puzzles were “mistakenly and unknowingly” placed in a stack of worksheets which were handed to five students on Monday. She didn’t indicate whether any employees had been disciplined or how the incident had occurred.

A staff member collected the “50 Shades of Wrong” puzzles after the children began snickering at words like “bondage,” “submissive,” and what the New York Times reported were even more explicit terms.

Parents of students in the school district are turning 50 shades of red over the word search puzzles. One of the parents, James Carter, complained about it at Tuesday night’s school board meeting as he said that he had attempted to inquire about the puzzle with the school’s principal and dean of students, but they had refused to talk to him when he insisted on recording the conversation. The parent told the board that he wanted to tape the conversation because a lot of the parents had questions about the incident.

“I wanted to record the conversation because a lot of parents had questions about it, and I was denied that.”

Monessen district officials indicated at the meeting on Monday that they could not discuss the issue as they had just learned about it themselves.

Spazak indicated that the circumstances of the puzzle are currently under investigation.

A member of the school board that was not in attendance at Monday’s meeting, Roberta Bergstedt, said in an email that it was a “huge but unintentional error” and that the puzzles were collected from the students. However, one student managed to retain a copy which was then posted on social media.

The movie, which is based on E.L. James’ best-selling erotic novel about a college student and her affair with a young billionaire, opened in theaters on Friday. As reported previously on Inquisitr, Madonna will not be seeing the movie this weekend along with hordes of interested moviegoers as she “wasn’t turned on” by the book, which she claimed in an interview with Billboard that she had read.

How do you think the Fifty Shades of Grey puzzles made it into the stack of assignments to be distributed to students at Monessen Middle School?