@midatlmom @sherpa @skieurope - Thank you!
So DS took AP Euro on Friday and felt it went well (either 5 or 4). He also played the voicemail for me that the P person had left in answer to the question (I was wrong and they didn’t talk in person).
The person on the vmail referred to talking to Dean Rapelye and said several times, “if you are taking an AP course, we expect you to take the AP Exam” and also referred to “Euro” specifically. I asked DS, “did you only ask about Euro?” and he said no, he mentioned the English one also. So I said, “save the voicemail and don’t take English” - which I think based on everything, is a safe bet. AP English was, as mentioned, not correlated to a class and was only on the list as a self-study (on Common App finished in October) - in the event that he attended MIT where it can count for an incoming freshman writing requirement.
If someone says, “hey you dishonest bozo, why didn’t you send us an AP Eng score?” then he can reasonably say, “I asked whether I should still take it since I had to miss work and pay but it didn’t count either for school for a course or for a P requirement, and I have the voicemail saying I had to follow through on the AP Euro because it was for a course, but no mention of English, so I didn’t miss work to take it, and I’m sorry.”
Does this seem sensible to the denizens of CC? and LOL @sherpa 
with your assessment of whether we’d be so laissez faire!