CNN Reporter: Northam Classmate Says It ‘Doesn’t Seem Possible’ There Was a Yearbook Photo Mix-Up

CNN looked into the process used to submit yearbook photos at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 1984 — the year Virginia governor Ralph Northam graduated — and found that, at least according to one of the people on the staff that year, it was unlikely that the photos were mixed up.

Dr. William Elwood worked on the yearbook staff in 1984. According to him, the photos were sent in a sealed envelope by each individual graduating student to be placed on their page and were kept in a locked area, making a mix-up unlikely.

CNN’s Sara Sidner reported on Monday night:

“[According to Elwood], the yearbook staff then took the sealed envelope, opened it up, and they placed the pictures on the actual personal page of each of the physicians who were graduating. And I asked him, look, is it possible that you or someone on the staff accidentally mixed up the pictures and put somebody’s picture on the wrong page and maybe that’s how this picture ended up on Dr. Northam’s personal page. And he said, anything is possible, but it is not probable. He said, either someone would have had to have done it maliciously or someone would have had to have done it mistakenly, but all of these pictures in this yearbook, they were in a locked area that only the staff could get in. And in his mind, it really doesn’t seem possible that that would have happened.”

Despite calls for his resignation, Northam remains resolute that he is not in the photo on his yearbook page showing a person in blackface standing next to someone dressed in KKK garb.

He also has at least some backup in his former med school roommate.

Responding via text to Salisbury Daily Times, Dr. John O. “Rob” Marsh thinks the whole thing was a prank.

“My theory (is) this was a horrible prank played on him,” Marsh said in the text. “But, I don’t know who would’ve done it or why and I cannot prove that. However, I think it would’ve been easy for someone to slip a picture like that into his envelope of pictures.”

Watch above, via CNN.

[image via screengrab]

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