<p>@WC, yes, and obviously there’s telling evidence in this instance. She and the school had parted ways prior to her arrest. I should add that I talked to every AO where we interviewed this year about disciplinary issues and policies. What I found so interesting was almost to a (wo)man they responded by letting me know that academic integrity (i.e., plagiarism) is considered a far more egregious–and serious–offense than first-time drink/drugs, or sexual activity. They know that teens are kids and that even the nnth percentile aren’t completely infallible, but there’s zero tolerance for academic fraud at BS.</p>
<p>one student does not represent an entire school.</p>
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<p>I wish to believe they are exceptions. But this year alone, they had the Groton incident, Andover drug bust, and now this at Deerfield. I may have missed some others. So I think it is a concern.</p>
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<p>“extremely compelling one”? by the standard and need for diversity? We don’t have all the facts yet, but it is possible Deerfield was blindsided by what she could bring to the table and didn’t look harder into this individual enough?</p>
<p>@Pulsar</p>
<p>Groton Incident.
Andover drug bust
Deerfield ex-student arrested</p>
<p>I don’t see how that’s statistically significant; your argument that it should be a “concern” is just not supported by the data. It doesn’t indicate patterns at any of these schools. TP’s point is true; these episodes ARE exceptions. Any school, no matter how highly regarded, will have them. Like WCMom said, the school’s response is the most important consideration.</p>
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<p>At the time of her arrest, she attended Millenium High School, a local public high school. [Millennium</a> High School (New York City) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_High_School_(New_York_City)]Millennium”>Millennium High School (New York City) - Wikipedia) I presume she lived at home. </p>
<p>AOs do as well as they can, with the information they have on hand at the time. They admit 8th graders. Adolescence and hormones change everything. If I had a penny for every human who had ever ruined her (or his) life for a lover, I’d be richer than Bill Gates.</p>
<p>RA, These are only known/found cases. As you know, it is hard to detect these activities. So the real problem may be much more than what we know from the outside. In one of the posts, one BS student posted a thread on drug use where (s)he said I quote “BS students are smart enough to know how much drugs to use, when to stop, which drug is dangerous etc.” So if you look at the total picture, not isolated incidents, it may be more worrisome than we like.</p>
<p>Stats: US average crime rate is 2 incidents per 1000 people.
Known incidents at A+D+G is at least 3 incidents per 2000 people.
BS are supposed to be much safer than that.</p>
<p>When a prep student makes a mistake, it appears in the papers. Many, many other students make mistakes, but they aren’t as interesting to the New York Daily News or the New York Post.</p>
<p>Don’t send a child to boarding school who has poor impulse control. Don’t send a child to boarding school with a known drug or alcohol addiction. Over time, they will be caught. </p>
<p>I agree with Prepinthesouth, schools have no tolerance for academic dishonesty.</p>
<p>I don’t have an issue with the AOs - teenagers are teenagers, and they do stupid things. It’s not always easy to predict.</p>
<p>I also don’t have an issue with the faculty/dorm heads who were unaware of what this student’s off-campus activities might have been. Off-campus means just that - and the school can’t be held liable for not knowing what goes on when a kid’s away from school.</p>
<p>My concern is with the student’s friends. They had to have known she had a boyfriend off-campus, and it’s likely that her closest friends were aware that he wasn’t an entirely upstanding character. So, if there was cause for concern at the time she was a Deerfield student<a href=“and%20that’s%20not%20a%20self-evident%20proposition”>/u</a>, why didn’t they speak up?</p>
<p>My question has to do with the level of mutual trust between students and faculty - and that probably does differ dramatically from one school to another. I want my kid at a campus where his fellow students are likely to speak up if they see him drifting into trouble . . . rather than maintaining a “code of silence” that doesn’t permit such secrets to be divulged to faculty.</p>
<p>If students are willing to speak up to protect each other’s safety - even when that means breaking a confidence - and faculty are willing to demonstrate that they deserve that trust, by responding appropriately and putting the student’s interests first, that will create a safer environment for all our kids.</p>
<p>Well said. Does this mean culturally DA doesn’t encourage students speaking up? Andover students seem to be more vocal based on my reading of their newspaper.</p>
<p>Maybe the Africa Owes disaster could have happened at any top BS. It just happened to have cursed Deerfield. For such, DA now suffers deep shame. But then are we surprised that this hell has visited a great BS, especially when so many BS’s stomp their feet and clap their hands about diversity and academic success above all? Nice things these, but never enough. Character, virtue, morality, courage. These are the things that matter. Until the BS’s again shout and show that these traits are the ultimate factors they want in students, we must sit back and wait for the shock of the next Groton suicide, the next Andover drug bust, the next Deerfield gun crime.</p>
<p>When something like this happens, do parents express their outrage (or something like it) to the school so that they make some meaningful changes or do they take a hands-off approach so as not to ruffle the feathers and thus leaving things status quo?</p>
<p>Wait. This student was effectively dismissed from Deerfield before all this went down, right? Did I miss something in the newspaper articles? Deerfield’s only connection to this girl is that she was a student that they saw great promise in, offered an opportunity to, and then charged her with two different discipline cases which led to her withdrawing rather than facing expulsion.</p>
<p>Where is the shame? What has Deerfield done wrong? What am I missing here. What I see is a girl with a lot of potential who blew her chance at Deerfield and then went downhill from there. Does anyone really think that DA should have some kind of future responsibility to the kids to whom they effectively say, “You can’t stay here any longer?”</p>
<p>What outrage should there be with the school? If I were I parent, I would simply think, “I guess they did the right thing by asking her to leave when they did. Kudos.”</p>
<p>As tragic as it is, it happens every day all over this country. Is it somehow more tragic that it was a former Deerfieldian? Trust me, there are probably tons of young adults sitting in jail that had the same potential that Afrika did, only they didn’t get picked up by a KIPP school or whatever. The amount of untapped talent in this country is the real tragedy. But I’m going off on a tangent and it’s a direction that I fear will cause a debate that I am quite frankly not up to. I should delete but I’m in a cranky mood so what the hell…</p>
<p>^^^agreed!</p>
<p>I was also wondering why the outrage. But, Neatoburrito said it better.</p>
<p>Wow…Personally, I think a LOT of you are overacting to this. The student wasn’t even a current student at Deerfield when this happened! She was there for a couple years! Besides, the HADES schools are college preparatory schools-they prepare bright, motivated kids, not reforming children with problems. It’s very sad, but it happens once in a while-bright kids lose their way! Instead of slamming Deerfield and other prep schools about this (Pulsar, this comment’s for you), maybe we should all take the opportunity to learn a lesson from this: Nobody’s perfect. Things happen.</p>
<p>I didn’t mean specifically Deerfield (as I said incidents like these), I was referring to Andover drug bust etc. (which happened on campus). If you keep on expelling students without fixing the underlying problems, it will continue to happen. Outrage may be a strong word, that’s why I said outrage or something like it.</p>
<p>Pulse, I wish I could tell you this is a new phenomenon, but the evidence strongly suggests against it. Even smart kids occasionally make dumb choices, especially if they fall into the trap of thinking they are SO smart, they can outsmart the adults around them!</p>
<p>Since when do these schools have to fix underlying problems like drug or alcohol addictions to a few students? These are college preparatory schools-they train you with a rigorous workload for college. If you can’t handle the rigor, then maybe you just aren’t suited for them.</p>
<p>If you want to know why the schools are responsible, God forbid if there is a DOD death on campus or something drastic like that, parents will be all over the school like paint on a wall.</p>