Let’s be honest…if you were an admissions officer and knew her parents predisposition towards conflict and Litigation would you want her at your school. All her HS had to do was tell the truth in a veiled manner and the results are predictable, earned and deserved.
Reap what you sow, karma is a b, don’t poke a bear with a short stick, etc…
This is a private school. They are under NO obligation to keep students on their roles. If this family was that difficult…why didn’t the school simply say “we are sorry, but we don’t feel we can meet your needs” and ask this student to leave.
Private schools can do that.
While you could semantically argue that this “may” go to USSC, as that’s the final appeal step, the odds are about one in a billion that they would take this judicially trivial case.
Facts of the case have been argued and appealed and none of the decisions show the slightest acceptance of the claims being made. There’s no issue of major legal importance, there are not conflicting decisions from different circuit courts, etc.
Makes me wonder exactly how this clickbait-titled story got onto CNN.
“Private schools can do that.”
I doubt it is as easy as it sounds and would most certainly have incurred another lawsuit from this family at that time.
“Makes me wonder exactly how this clickbait-titled story got onto CNN.”
It’s not just CNN. There are a few other media references to it and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more tomorrow. The media and public like stories about prestigious private schools.
@doschicos it IS as easy as it sounds…and it happens all the time. Private schools are under no obligation to keep a student. None at all.
Lawsuits and unfavorable press don’t make it “easy”, @thumper1. Obviously, from this story, this is not your average family who would walk away without a fight.
I’d encourage all to read ucb’s 2nd link in post #1, the appeals court findings.
“There is no evidence, and therefore no genuine dispute, that any breach of the Settlement Agreement was material; and there is no evidence, and therefore no genuine dispute, that Sidwell took adverse actions against plaintiffs in retaliation for their engagement in protected activities.”
Interesting: “Respondent agrees, in good faith, to recalculate or recompute with explanation the following grades by September 30, 2013; however, Respondent offers no guarantees as to any changes in results.” I assume this means without justification. They did change one semester grade from A- to A, when, supposedly, the teacher realized the lowest semester grade hadn’t been dropped for all of the students in that class.
Is money the common thread in the various suits? They made money in the earlier suit and don’t want to pay Sidwell’s legal costs for this one?
“Renewed sympathy for Sidwell employees with each passing day. Now students want to litigate their grades and comments? Ugh.”
You understand that she essentially won on these issues at the administrative level with Sidwell having to pay 50K, regrade some of her classes, and not retaliate. While this was a settlement, the amount in this case would be highly unusual unless there was some pretty decent evidence in support of her claims. The issue in THIS case was whether Sidwell retaliated causing the student to lose out on admissions. The lower courts found that there wasn’t adequate evidence of this and even if there were she wasn’t damaged.
If she wins I would give her $1.
That’s the economic damage caused by a year to grow as human being, having to settle on Penn (sarcastic) and graduating with an elite Ivy League engineering degree.
The plaintiff was a lifer at Sidwell. What an opportunity.
Her father is an ER doc and educated in Hungary and a Nigerian by birth.
So Dayo is a first generation American, URM and educated at one of the top schools in the country and graduated from Penn.
It seems to me a storybook experience and the opposite of being the subject of being a victim of bias.
Why in the world would they possibly do this to her. Especially since she was a clsssmate of the Presidents daughters and the world watching. It would be naturally in their best interest to see her off to the best school possible
Perhaps she wasn’t the nicest classmate or great to be around.
Her profile would be at the top of every admissions pile even with a few Bs of C grades. Athlete. Great story. URM. Best school and solid academic profile. And smart.
My guess is recs weren’t glowing and interviews/coaches interactions weren’t positive.
Not much else seems to make sense to me.
The lawyer handling the case is Richard Carnell Baker. He has spent his career on whistleblower cases and affirmative action type complaints. His LinkedIn page has a unique focus on AA students and a focus on female AA students at Ivy League schools and other related matters. Which is terrific.
It does lead me to believe that perhaps she or her parents were talked into this grievance.
But perhaps the case will be heard. Two of the justices being Georgetown Prep alums would probably enjoy giving a jab to their Sidwell rivals.
I recommend reading the legal documents, to which ucbalumnus posted the link, in post #1. The circumstances are more complicated than they seem on the surface, and in my view more favorable to complainant.
If I were an HR manager at any company, I wouldn’t hire this young lady, despite her credentials, UPenn and all.
I did.
As is often the case
Well, that’s what her legal team is supposed to do. Regardless, I came away with an opposite view.
Regardless, this case is DOA. No way will SCOTUS hear this. In my opinion, of course.
In the legal documents linked by ucbalumnus, pages 22 and 23 seem problematic to me. The Math II instructor was directed by the headmaster to preserve the work product and grade record of the student after the school year ended, but instead shredded the work, destroyed the original grade book, and preserved copies of only some parts of the grade book. One significant test in particular had a grade assigned despite the student’s statement that she had never taken the test. There is a question of the school policy about situations where a student-athlete misses classes and/or tests due to athletic competitions. In this case, I surmise that the student was missing some tests, quizzes, or other activities because she was on a travel team. Differential treatment of make-up work by different athletes would not be right.
Material on page 16 seems problematic. It is alleged that the headmaster “charged” at the father, and made a statement about wanting the family “gone, gone, gone from the School.” This happened, or it didn’t. The school apparently does not dispute it, however.
There is also an allegation of non-compliance with the Settlement agreement, mentioned on page 18. There is a claim that the transcript was not corrected in a timely manner (ahead of distribution to the colleges), when it was agreed by the school that it should be corrected.
Finally, it is interesting that the student went from C+/C in Math II to A/A- in Calculus, which is a rare pattern in my experience.
I would not discriminate against the student for pursuing the legal complaint.
Did anyone see this bit of trivia:
“7 Sidwell’s designated college admissions expert witness is William “Rick” Singer. Sidwell’s Exh. S to MSJ, Excerpts of Singer’s Deposition (10/14/16). Mr. Singer opined that Dayo would not have been admitted to the Ivy League schools to which she applied “because her grades and . . . scores and . . . overall essay . . . was [sic] not strong.” Id. at 207:14-21; 208. Singer was indicted and plead guilty to spearheading a massive college admissions fraud scheme involving Yale, which is one of the colleges to which Dayo applied.”
I will admit that if there is one person that knows admissions to selective colleges in and out, it’s Singer.
Anyway, it does look like the math teacher screwed up, was it because she discriminated on race, (lenient to the white athletes but not to black ones) is of course a much more serious allegation.
^Great catch @Theloniusmonk!
Not saying that they did retaliate against this student, but at a Quaker school going to court to press a complaint has about the same moral status that seeking an abortion would have at a Catholic school. Both are constitutionally protected rights and profoundly at odds with the values of the institution and the people in it.
For what it is worth, it looks like Sidwell Friends math courses have the sequence Math I → Math II as an honors accelerated version of geometry → algebra 2 → precalculus. After Math II, students could go on to Math III → Math IV, or calculus 1 → calculus 2. From the catalog description, calculus 1 and 2 look like a two year calculus AB and BC sequence, while Math III and IV look like an honors sequence (but the curriculum is organized differently, so that the student is ready for the BC test only at the end of Math IV). Note: they are not explicitly AP courses, since Sidwell Friends is one of those schools that disdains AP courses, but they apparently do realize that many of their students will want to take advanced placement in math in college.
Plaintiff appears to be just another racial rabble rouser. ?
This whole thing seems like a big clown show. She blames the school for not submitting SAT scores? She blames the school for advocating for a HBCU rather than non-HBCU when they were only advocating because she sent the HBCU application late?
Is it unreasonable to expect a person that believes she is Ivy material to be able to figure out the basics of how college applications work?
Good catch, @ucbalumnus. So what you’re saying is Math II is an honors class, and the best math students then move to Math II. Students who are not the best move on to Calculus, a two year calculus sequence, instead. That could explain the C/C+ in Math II and the A/A- in Calculus.
This kid applied to, what, twelve lottery schools and then stuck in a late application to Spelman. That right there says a lot. We can be 100% sure that Sidwell guidance was counseling a different set of applications than the one she chose.