Is Your Workplace Uptight Enough to Fire You over a Fetty Wap Quote?

Call it a test of just how tightly the parents and administrators of a school district can clutch a shared set of pearls: Can a principal survive being associated with a quote from a Grammy-nominated, diamond-certified hip-hop song? Especially when the principal in question claims they had absolutely nothing to do with how that quote ended up attributed to them in the school yearbook? In Florida, it would seem that the answer is “no,” given that the principal of one school, St. Augustine’s Trout Creek Academy, has been removed from her position for the high crime of having her name appear in the school yearbook next to a quote from a Fetty Wap track. Scandal of scandals!

Said principal is named Katie O’Connell, an educator who has been with the St. Johns County school system for at least five years. It seems her time in the job has come to an end, though, after she was placed on administrative leave following the publishing of the annual school yearbook. On the very first page of that yearbook, one finds a photo of the school, accompanied by a quote attributed to O’Connell: “Everybody hating, we just call them fans though!” That would be a quote from the Fetty Wap track “Trap Queen,” which became an absolutely gigantic hit in 2015, was nominated for multiple Grammys, and a decade later is pushing nearly 1 billion YouTube views. So yeah, clearly something extremely controversial here, and by no means a lighthearted reference to a shared cultural touchstone.

O’Connell claims she didn’t even approve or see that quote, and that the day before the final submission of the yearbook for printing, the Fetty Wap reference didn’t even appear on the page. Assistant Principal Samantha Sawruk likewise stated that the quote didn’t exist when they signed off on the design, with O’Connell speculating an exceedingly obvious possibility: A prank by students. Adding to that likelihood is the fact that O’Connell apparently doesn’t call herself “Mrs. O’Connell” in writing, but always signs off as “Ms. O”.

Nevertheless, the St. Johns County School District put her on administration leave in late May anyway, citing “inappropriate conduct.” A letter sent to O’Connell afterward makes it more or less clear that she’s been fired, saying “Please understand that this action is being taken as we move towards a non-reappointment for the 2026-2027 school year,” while clarifying that she isn’t allowed to return to school grounds unless told to by the school’s administrators. The school website would seemingly back up this assertion that she has been terminated, given that it lists the position of Principal as “TBA.”

This is pretty clearly some hoighty-toighty bullshit the school is engaging in, enough to make one wonder what kind of enemies O’Connell had managed to make in the district, or among parents, that they would so enthusiastically leap on an opportunity to project scandal and mock outrage in order to take her down. This is in fact my favorite thing about the fairly thorough local reporting on the incident: It’s very detailed in the “how did this happen?” vein, but makes absolutely no attempt whatsoever to even begin to communicate the argument that absolutely anyone has made as to why it’s a big problem that a Fetty Wap quote appeared in the school yearbook. Would ANY hip-hop quote have been a firable offense, here? Is it specific to Fetty Wap, who admittedly served a prison sentence for trafficking illegal substances between 2022-2026? Or is it a condemnation of “Trap Queen,” which has its own drug references? Is there an approved list of which rapper references do and do not constitute “inappropriate conduct”?

What exactly is the bar, when it comes to sacking an educator whose official position is that she didn’t even choose or approve the quote in question? Is the school simply choosing not to believe her, or do they intend to hunt down a prankster student and expel them as well? None of the local reporting contains a single quote from someone willing to go on the record in explaining why this was such a grave offense in the first place–the closest we get is a reference in the small town St. Johns Citizen, in which we are told that “several parents said the quote appeared to mock families who had previously raised serious concerns about issues at the school,” without any mention of what those issues are supposed to be. None of those “parents” has the guts to give an actual quote explaining their apparent outrage. We’re left with nothing but the inference that some parent or group with an axe to grind chose to find offense in what was in all probability a profoundly tame prank.

Perhaps if O’Connell is lucky, the hip-hop superstar himself will notice this strange set of headlines his name is being attached to, and swing in to support the principal who had to take a dive from merely being associated with the most banal quote imaginable. You may rue the rigid corporate culture you exist in, but at least it’s probably better than being sacked over a yearbook quote you didn’t even choose.