I’m really surprised at the way Head of School Stephen Murray handled this. I always considered Murray to be one of the top prep school heads in the country. Murray always seemed to have great interaction with the students at L’ville.
How about some of the blame being put on the L’ville student body? More than a few L’ville students must have known Jack Reid was being bullied.
Was it too much of a hassle to intervene and prevent this tragedy? Shouldn’t the students try and protect each other? What kind of character do the students admitted to L’ville possess?
This is a terrible terrible series of events. My heart breaks for that family.
This sounds like something that could have very easily transpired at my BS (not lville), when I was there way back in 1990s. Rumors ran wild, kids stuck with terrible nasty nicknames, and accusations festered. Sometimes these kids dropped out, some stuck it out but were pretty miserable. All wide open, and even sometimes in yearbooks. Teachers obviously knew and did nothing, at least not publicly. Saving face and hiding problems and problem kids was pretty common, letting important athletes or connected kids get away with things in particular. (No clue who the bully was in this case, of course, or if they were connected, etc) It is sad to me nothing had changed, at least at some schools.
e.g. We had kids get kicked out for pretty bad stuff (was pretty hard to get kicked out), and then end up at peer schools the following year. I am not sure if my school didn’t tell or the new school didn’t care, but either way not a great look for BS. I had a relative who ended up working at my BS relatively recently (after also having worked at LPS) and they said they were appalled by many things that they saw. One thing they commented on was how loose systems were for health and safety.
Of course one would hope that fellow students would have stood up for the bullied student. But it is the school and the adults that run the school that have a duty of care to the families that entrust them with their precious children. The buck stops somewhere in this case, and that is in the headmasters office. The public reporting makes that crystal clear. Now that all the papers have picked this up I see no alternative other than for Lawrenceville to clean house of their upper administration.
Sounds like my experience in the early 90s. Not to mention the fact that many of the kids who did get kicked out for serious violations somehow wound up at excellent universities anyway.
There is an insidious old boys culture at these schools, and in some tragic and unfortunate situations such as this one, that culture can be deadly. BS can be amazing and open many doors and produce amazing young adults. But a school, any community actually, is only as strong as its most vulnerable members.
(By old boys culture, I mean a culture of silence and avoiding difficult conversations as well as making the road easier for wealthy/connected students)
To be honest, most of the kids we see and hear of getting kicked out of the well-known schools are wealthy/connected students. I think it has changed a lot and these schools are more academic than the social “finishing” schools of years past.
Yes those are the kids I’m talking about. The wealthy/connected who get kicked out one BS, bounce to another good BS, and matriculate at Princeton (or wherever)
Boarding schools haven’t been finishing schools since the 60s/70s but I get your point.
As this is a complicated matter, I assume sometimes headmaster don’t have the complete power over this. I am not defending the headmaster, but it is the whole adult body’s responsibility.
Not every student being kicked out is bad student. school is school, it is NOT correction unit. Of course these kids could go to excellent university’s (not mentioning sometimes BS could have very absurd rules)
I am going to assume that the parents’ goal in requiring this disclosure by the school is intended to be constructive and not destructive. I pray that exposing what can be done better is the first step in doing better and that all schools (public, private, boarding etc.) learn, change, and find ways to better support our youth. I know of too many young people who have died by suicide and all cases were different an in none of those cases could you point to just one thing.
Although the article just came out today, the school administration has to have known the outcome of the investigation for at least weeks if not months. I hope that you have seen positive changes at your school this year and continue to see more. Wishing you and your school community all the best as this is hard for everyone.
Actually I think boarding schools will be quicker to request students to leave after this-if the boy’s professional therapist didnt think he was suicidal, and his parents ( one of whom was also a psychologist) didn’t raise the alarm regarding his mental health, the school likely did not realize the danger. I would expect schools to practice greater risk-avoidance concerning troubled students in the future, and maybe that is for the best, that students return home to be monitored by their parents.
The real question is how hard is it for big donors/star athletes (etc) to get kicked out and if they get the same treatment as others. Of course it is possible for anyone to be expelled and/or asked not to come back, but are infractions swept under the rug more for certain groups than others? I certainly can’t comment on all schools.
That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t blame the kids. They are who they are. It’s the schools’ admission policy that equates goodness to many hours of volunteer work or community service. Many times kids do them because they will apply to bs or colleges and not because they genuinely care about other people. The hours may not show who that person is.
I think most kids are nice. But it doesn’t take many people to make a mess.
Unfortunately, I think the lesson to be learned here is that weak administrators can be found at all types of schools- private, public, day, boarding- and weak administrators have a look-the-other-way approach to bullying by other students and even faculty and staff. Their inside counsels reinforce this approach. Weak admins can put on a very convincing show for parents and prospective parents. You really can only learn what schools have vigorous and proactive admins by asking your child about their experience with discipline at their school, including and especially incidents in which they are bystanders.
I have never heard of this admin and have no relationship with this particular BS, but this whole story reeks of admins who are not keeping an adequate pulse on the social and emotional dynamics in the student body.
No school, including boarding, absolves any parent of the need for them to take an active role in their children’s lives and to develop trust with their children, including and especially if their child is the bully. Why was this expelled student permitted back on campus and in dorms?
In this case though, I don’t think Jack was a “troubled” student or had serious mental health issues, to the point where an alarm would be raised that he was suicidal. Yes, some suicides are carefully planned and completed after long periods of ideation. But many - especially in teens - are simply impulsive acts during a short-term crisis that unfortunately have tragic long-term consequences. They typically happen after a triggering event, and it certainly seems like the events of that day would qualify: the expelled bully was unsupervised on campus and returned to the same house where Jack lived, to take pictures and say goodbye to friends. In one article I read, he (falsely) told his friends that Jack was the reason he was being expelled. The fact that the adults in charge 1) allowed this behavior and 2) never checked in on Jack is beyond irresponsible.
He was seeing a therapist and had a traumatic semester-his mental health was clearly poor if he committed suicide, even if rashly. It seems that no one realized how fragile he was. I hope adults are more observant in the future, although some students do hide their troubles remarkably well.