“Feted ex-Minnesota Vikings player and dad Sullivan “Tripp” Welborne, the 57-year-old dean of athletics at the Lawrenceville School outside Princeton, created a top job for illicit paramour Nicole Stock, 38 — and threw in an ATV for her to ride around the tony campus to boot, according to the Mercer County Superior Court lawsuit filed Friday.”
What is going on at Lawrenceville??
This is from the same school that let two suicides in one year occur under its watch in 2022. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with the administration’s culture there.
This is an employment dispute, not necessarily a “scandal”. It’s a little surprising that there is no policy that prohibits a reporting relationship between two people who are romantically involved – this is a pretty common restriction in most organizations, not just schools.
Without familiarity with the details, it’s easy to imagine that the seemingly inappropriate relationship will allow the plaintiffs to prevail . Otoh, had there been no relationship, it’s easy to imagine that the plaintiffs were the unfortunate victims of a legitimate reorganization.
BS present some especially challenging tensions when it comes to longtime employees. These are often folks who have lived on campus, have served in multiple roles over their tenure, and who are both a part of and keepers of the culture. As the schools evolve (as they must), so do the jobs and these longtime employees may no longer be ideal fits for their jobs. Whether this is the case here isn’t clear, but it’s understandable that employees who have “done their time” for decades in a residential community would feel betrayed in any case, and especially one involving a romantic relationship.
It seems Lawrenceville will be slapped with lawsuits from left and right.
I think that most schools have policies in place to prevent employees having reporting relationships on top of romantic relationships. Lawrenceville must have pretty awful attorneys if this isn’t included in employment contracts.
At least in this case it seems like Welborne and Stock were able to be discreet for a number of years since no one suspected until recently. My question would be whether the students knew as they often see things that staff members would hide from other staff members.
No, it was not discreet at all. From the lawsuit, it says “In or around 2021 Plaintiffs noticed that Defendant Welborne and Ms. Stock were flirting at work, touching each other, and spending an increased amount of time together unrelated to their work.“
If they were so indiscreet, then it’s shocking that the administration wasn’t aware and even worse that they didn’t do anything to discipline Welborne or change the reporting relationship. I would think that the Board will have serious questions for the Head of School.
Side question: What does an incident like this typically do to admissions? Is there a short-term dip in applicants? For example, I can’t imagine that any serious football players would want to attend this year for example.
Honestly, I’m going to guess very little. It’s hard – impossible – to know whether the plaintiffs were wrongfully dismissed, even if all the allegations about the romantic relationship are accurate. And whatever the outcome, how do applicants imagine this will impact their 4 years? Most are probably thinking not at all, if they are thinking about it at all. Recruits may care more about coaching staff that departmental structure. Hard to know.
My guess is that many schools and colleges have experienced employment lawsuits at some time - around any number of different issues, but the facts around this and the fact that it was at L’ville made it more interesting to the press.
Lawrenceville has been able to significantly upgrade its football talent. Its refurbished football field is apectacular. While not quite on a par with Choate, Exeter and other top NEPSAC football schools, Big Red football is gaining momentum.