Education
After Student’s Suicide, an Elite School Says It Fell ‘Tragically Short’
Final April, Jack Reid, a 17-year-old junior at one of many nation’s elite boarding colleges, tucked a Bible into his fitness center shorts and a be aware into his pocket directing his mother and father to a Google doc explaining his emotions of despair. Then, inside his dorm room, he took his personal life.
On Sunday, the anniversary of Jack’s loss of life, the Lawrenceville Faculty in New Jersey provided a unprecedented admission of failure, publicly acknowledging that it had been conscious that Jack was being bullied by different college students, however that it had fallen “tragically brief” of its obligation to guard him.
“The college acknowledges that bullying and unkind habits, and actions taken or not taken by the college, doubtless contributed to Jack’s loss of life,” Lawrenceville officers wrote in an announcement posted Sunday morning on the college’s web site.
The college dedicated to taking a collection of corrective actions together with endowing a brand new dean’s place that will probably be centered on psychological well being points, with a purpose of changing into a mannequin for anti-bullying and scholar psychological well being.
The assertion was a part of a negotiated settlement with Jack’s mother and father, Elizabeth and Invoice Reid.
It provided a candid and detailed catalog of the college’s missteps earlier than Jack’s loss of life and a window into the tradition of a personal establishment the place room and board tops $76,000 a 12 months. It additionally represents shifting attitudes surrounding the psychological well being disaster amongst youngsters and the function of bullying in an at all times complicated set of things that may contribute to suicide.
“We really feel like we each have life sentences with out the potential for parole,” Dr. Reid, a medical psychologist, mentioned in an interview during which her husband additionally participated. “The one factor I’d love to alter right here is to get Jack again. I can’t.”
She added, “I do know if he had been alive, he would need me — each of us — to attempt to make one thing good out of this and honor him in the way in which he lived his life.”
Richard Lieberman, the lead suicide prevention knowledgeable for the general public faculty system in Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest system, known as Lawrenceville’s response uncommon — and brave. He mentioned he had by no means earlier than heard of a college’s accepting accountability so publicly after a suicide.
“We have to discuss extra about this. We actually do,” he mentioned. “It’s a number one reason for loss of life of our youth.”
Jack was bullied over the course of a 12 months, the college mentioned within the assertion posted on Sunday.
After his suicide, the college’s board of trustees retained the regulation agency Petrillo Klein & Boxer to research the circumstances surrounding his loss of life. The investigation included interviews with 45 college students, college members and others, based on an in depth report on its findings, which the college offered to The New York Instances.
The agency additionally reviewed emails from greater than 100 college students and college personnel, in addition to Jack’s private emails, telephone data, textual content messages and web searches, the report mentioned.
“We mentioned from the start, ‘Let’s search the reality and observe it the place it leads us. Interval,’ ” Stephen S. Murray, Lawrenceville’s head of college, mentioned on Sunday. “And that’s what we’ve tried to do each step of the way in which.”
He added: “This occurred on my watch and I’m grief stricken. And but I can’t start to check that to the grief and sorrow of Invoice and Elizabeth Reid.”
Lawrenceville’s assertion mentioned that its settlement with the Reids was geared toward “honoring Jack, taking acceptable accountability and instituting significant adjustments that can help the college’s aspirations of changing into a mannequin for anti-bullying and scholar psychological well being.”
The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated an already worrying psychological well being emergency amongst youngsters, made worse by a extreme scarcity of therapists and remedy choices and inadequate analysis to clarify the pattern. Almost three in 5 ladies reported feeling persistent unhappiness in 2021. Suicide charges additionally ticked up that 12 months after a two-year decline, notably in teams most affected by the pandemic, based on a report launched in February by the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention.
Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer for the American Basis for Suicide Prevention, mentioned the causes of suicide had been at all times complicated and had been by no means tied to just one stressor.
“Bullying completely might be an vital issue that may be a part of the multi-factor convergence of issues that culminates in suicide,” Dr. Moutier mentioned in an interview, talking typically and never about Jack Reid’s loss of life or another particular incident. “However it’s not thought, in any case of suicide, to be the only trigger.”
The regulation agency Kaplan Hecker & Fink, which represented the Reids, declined to touch upon the settlement or whether or not it included a cost by the college to the household.
Lawrenceville enrolls about 830 college students on a spacious campus in western New Jersey, between Trenton and Princeton. It’s thought of by the school-ranking web site Area of interest to be among the many nation’s prime 10 boarding colleges. Earlier than enrolling in Lawrenceville as a sophomore, Jack attended the Buckley Faculty on the Higher East Facet of Manhattan, the place he was recalled as a frontrunner who constantly stood out for his kindness. Roughly 900 individuals attended a funeral service, Jack’s mother and father mentioned, and 1,500 extra watched it on-line.
Jack’s early days at Lawrenceville, the place he arrived as a tenth grader within the fall of 2020, had been completely happy ones, his mother and father mentioned. He made mates and the dean’s listing.
However within the spring of 2021, a persistent and unfaithful rumor that Jack was a rapist unfold broadly all through the scholar physique and led to merciless feedback from some college students, based on his mother and father.
In September 2021, when he returned to high school as a junior, he was nonetheless elected president of Dickinson Home, one of many residential homes the place the college’s boarding college students dwell. That seems to have elevated animosity amongst a few of his classmates and precipitated the rumor to unfold additional, his mother and father mentioned.
A couple of days after the election, the unfounded rape accusation was posted anonymously to a nationwide, student-run app well-liked with boarding-school college students, Jack’s mother and father mentioned.
The bullying unfold shortly on-line, his mother and father mentioned, and at Christmastime, throughout a secret Santa reward change amongst Lawrenceville classmates, Jack obtained a rape whistle and a e-book about easy methods to make mates.
Mr. Reid recalled that his son was harm deeply, and that when Jack got here house for Christmas he appeared withdrawn. “Dad, will this ever go away?” he mentioned his son requested him, “Will it ever get off the web site?”
Mr. Reid famous that the in-person bullying in school mixed with the facility of the web posting compounded the rumor’s affect.
“We expect bullying, with the 1,000 occasions echo chamber of the web and all people realizing, is way more devastating to youngsters and, in Jack’s case, produced a really impulsive act,” he mentioned. “He needed to escape the ache from the humiliation he was feeling.”
Early on, with help from his mother and father, Jack approached faculty officers and requested them to intervene, resulting in a school-led investigation surrounding the bullying and the sexual assault allegation.
The college inquiry discovered that the declare was bogus, and a classmate concerned in spreading the rumors, who was later expelled for an unrelated violation of college guidelines, was formally disciplined for bullying Jack, based on the college’s assertion.
However Lawrenceville by no means advised Jack or his household — or anybody else — that the investigation had concluded that the rumors involving a sexual assault had been completely false.
“There have been steps that the college ought to in hindsight have taken however didn’t, together with the truth that the college didn’t make a public or non-public assertion that it investigated and located rumors about Jack that had been unfaithful,” Lawrenceville mentioned within the assertion.
The college and the Reids additionally tried unsuccessfully to get feedback associated to the sexual assault claims faraway from the app.
The college additionally acknowledged that it had erred extra particularly on the evening Jack took his life, simply hours after the classmate concerned within the bullying was formally expelled. As a substitute of being supervised as he packed his belongings, the boy was permitted to take part in a drawn-out farewell that included a closing run round campus and a bunch {photograph}. In the course of the gathering, some college students additionally made harsh feedback about Jack, inaccurately blaming him for the boy’s expulsion.
“Faculty directors didn’t notify or test on Jack,” the college’s assertion acknowledged. “That evening, Jack took his life, telling a pal that he couldn’t undergo this once more.”
Dr. Reid mentioned that Jack had been seeing a therapist on the time of his loss of life due to the bullying, however that he had by no means mentioned killing himself. Jack additionally displayed not one of the underlying components that may have indicated he was in danger for suicide, she mentioned.
The college mentioned that it will contribute to a basis the Reid household has established that can give attention to schooling and prevention of bullying, and that it will make a recurring reward to a psychological well being group to help analysis and greatest practices for suicide prevention at school environments.
Public colleges in most states are ruled by legal guidelines that regulate the investigation and response to habits thought of bullying and require instruction geared toward limiting its unfold.However non-public, parochial and boarding colleges have much more autonomy in deciding easy methods to deal with bullying.
Mr. Reid mentioned that the household additionally hoped to foyer for laws in New York and New Jersey in an effort to broaden legal guidelines tied to bullying at non-public colleges.
Lawrenceville mentioned in its assertion that it will contract with a specialist to draft insurance policies to establish and deal with behaviors that result in faculty bullying and cyberbullying.
“We acknowledge,” the college mentioned, “that extra ought to have been accomplished to guard Jack.”
If you’re having ideas of suicide, name or textual content 988 to achieve the Nationwide Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/sources for a listing of extra sources.
I’m a historian of totalitarianism. I look at fascist rhetoric. I’ve been thinking about the sources of the worst kinds of history for a quarter of a century. “Experts say the constitutional crisis is here now.” ”The Trump administration deporting hundreds of men without a trial.” “A massive purge at the F.B.I.” “To make people afraid of speaking out against him.” I’m leaving to the University of Toronto because I want to do my work without the fear that I will be punished for my words. The lesson of 1933 is you get out sooner rather than later. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last decade trying to prepare people if Trump were elected once, let alone twice. “Look what happened. Is this crazy?” [CHEERING] I did not flee Trump. But if people are going to leave the United States or leave American universities, there are reasons for that. One thing you can definitely learn from Russians — — is that it’s essential to set up centers of resistance in places of relative safety. We want to make sure that if there is a political crisis in the U.S., that Americans are organized. ”We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet. It’s all just kicking in.” My colleagues and friends, they were walking around and saying, “We have checks and balances. So let’s inhale, checks and balances, exhale, checks and balances.” And I thought, my God, we’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink. We’ve got the best ship. We’ve got the strongest ship. We’ve got the biggest ship. Our ship can’t sink. And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink. “The golden age of America has only just begun.” America has long had an exceptionalist narrative — fascism can happen elsewhere, but not here. But talking about American exceptionalism is basically a way to get people to fall into line. If you think that there’s this thing out there called America and it’s exceptional, that means that you don’t have to do anything. Whatever is happening, it must be freedom. And so then what your definition of freedom is just gets narrowed and narrowed and narrowed and narrowed, and soon, you’re using the word freedom — what you’re talking about is authoritarianism. Toni Morrison warned us: “The descent into a final solution is not a jump. It’s one step. And then another. And then another.” We are seeing those steps accelerated right now. There are some words in Russian in particular that I feel help us to understand what’s happening in the United States because we now have those phenomena. “Proizvol”: It’s the idea that the powers that be can do anything they want to and you have no recourse. This not knowing who is next creates a state of paralysis in society. The Tufts student whose visa was removed because she co-authored an article in the Tufts student newspaper. [DESPERATE YELLING] I thought, what would I do if guys in masks tried to grab my student? Would I scream? Would I run away? Would I try to pull the mask off? Would I try to videotape the scene? Would I try to pull the guys off of her? Maybe I would get scared and run away. The truth is, I don’t know. Not knowing terrified me. It’s a deliberate act of terror. It’s not necessary. It’s just being done to create a spirit of us and them. “Prodazhnost”: It’s a word in Russian for corruption, but it’s larger than corruption. It refers to a kind of existential state in which not only everything but everyone can be bought or sold. “Critics are calling this a quid pro quo deal between Adams and President Trump.” “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza.” “He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million.” There’s an expression in Polish: “I found myself at the very bottom, and then I heard knocking from below.” In Russian, that gets abbreviated to “There is no bottom.” “We cannot allow a handful of communist radical left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws.” What starts to matter is not what is concealed but what has been normalized. There is no limit to the depravity — ”President Trump did not rule out the possibility of a third term.” — and the sadism — “The White House released this video titled ASMR Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” — and the cruelty that we are watching now play out in real time. “This facility is one of the tools in our tool kit that we will use.” You have to continually ask yourself the question, “Is this OK? Is there a line I wouldn’t cross? Is there something I would not do?” People say, oh, the Democrats should be doing more. They should be fixing things. But if you want the Democrats to do things, you have to create the platform for them. You have to create the spectacle, the pageantry, the positive energy, the physical place where they can come to you. Poland recently went through a shift towards authoritarianism. Unlike in Russia, unlike in Hungary, the media remained a place, in Poland, where you could criticize the regime. And as a result, democracy returned. The moral of Poland is that our democratic institutions — the media, the university, and the courts — are essential. You know you’re living in a fascist society when you’re constantly going over in your head the reasons why you’re safe. What we want is a country where none of us have to feel that way.
Advocates for private-school choice celebrated this week as a federal schools voucher bill moved closer to becoming law, a major milestone that eluded their movement during President Trump’s first term.
The House Republican budget proposal that advanced on Monday would devote $5 billion to federal vouchers for private-school tuition, home-schooling materials and for-profit virtual learning.
The program in the budget bill could bring vouchers to all 50 states for the first time, including Democratic-leaning ones that have long rejected the idea.
Supporters hailed the proposal as “historic” and a “huge win,” but some cautioned that there was still much legislative haggling ahead.
“Ultimately, every child, especially from lower-income families, should have access to the school of their choice, and this legislation is the only way to make that happen,” said Tommy Schultz, chief executive of the American Federation for Children, a private-school choice advocacy group.
Opponents of the proposal were stunned at its sweeping implications. While it is in line with President Trump’s agenda, it had been considered somewhat of a long shot to make it out of the House Ways and Means Committee, because of its cost.
The program is structured as a $5 billion tax credit, allowing donors to reduce their tax bill by $1 for every $1 they give to nonprofits that grant scholarships — up to 10 percent of the donor’s income.
The option to donate is expected to be popular with wealthy taxpayers.
The resulting scholarships could be worth $5,000 per child, reaching one million students. Any family who earns less than 300 percent of their area’s median income — which equals over $300,000 in some parts of the country — could use the funds, meaning a vast majority of families would be eligible.
The proposal could pass through the budget reconciliation process, and could become law with only 51 votes in a Senate where Republicans hold 53 seats.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, many Republican-led states passed new private-school choice laws, overcoming decades of resistance from teachers’ unions, Democrats and rural conservatives. Opponents have long argued that vouchers hurt traditional public schools, by decreasing enrollment and funding levels. And they have pointed out that lower-income neighborhoods and rural areas often have few private schools, making it difficult for many families to use vouchers.
“We are against giving people tax breaks to defund public schools,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest education union.
She pointed out that while Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans have said they want to invest in work force education, artificial intelligence education and other priorities for student learning, they have consistently proposed cutting funding to public schools, which educate nearly 90 percent of American students.
“They don’t believe in public schooling,” she said. “What you’re seeing here is the fragmentation of American education.”
A boom in new private-education options, like virtual learning and microschools, has already changed the landscape — as has an influx of campaign spending from conservative donors, like the financier Jeff Yass, intended to build support for private-school choice.
Last month, Texas became the last major Republican-led state to pass such legislation. Advocates quickly shifted their focus to Congress and the opportunity to push a federal voucher bill.
Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, is the sponsor of a Senate bill similar to the House proposal, and celebrated its inclusion in the budget package.
“Expanding President Trump’s tax cuts is about preserving the American dream,” he said in a written statement. “Giving parents the ability to choose the best education for their child makes the dream possible.”
But the proposal will still have to overcome opposition, on both the left and the right.
Advocates for public schools have said that the new generation of vouchers and education savings accounts, which are often available to relatively affluent families, are a subsidy to parents who can already afford private education.
In Florida, which has more children using vouchers than any other state in the nation, some public-school districts have experienced enrollment declines and are considering shutting down schools or cutting teaching positions.
Even some conservative parental-rights activists oppose the creation of a federal program, which they worry could create a regulatory pathway that could eventually be used to impose government requirements on home-schooling parents or private schools — for example, by requiring standardized testing, which is not mentioned in the current proposal.
“The federal government should extricate itself from K-12 education to the fullest extent possible,” said Christopher Rufo, a leading crusader against diversity programs in schools, and a supporter of school choice. “It’s best left to the states.”
Harvard University struck a respectful but firm tone in a letter to the Trump administration on Monday, arguing that the university and the administration shared the same goals, though they differed in their approaches. It was latest move in an extraordinary back-and-forth between the school and the federal government in recent weeks.
The letter from Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s president, was sent a week after the Trump administration said it would stop giving Harvard any research grants.
Last month, the university took the government to court over what it has called unlawful intrusion into its operations. But on Monday, Dr. Garber’s tone was softer, saying he agreed with some of the Trump administration’s concerns about higher education, but that Harvard’s efforts to combat bigotry and foster an environment for free expression had been hurt by the government’s actions.
Dr. Garber said he embraced the goals of curbing antisemitism on campus; fostering more intellectual diversity, including welcoming conservative voices; and curtailing the use of race in admissions decisions.
Those goals “are undermined and threatened by the federal government’s overreach into the constitutional freedoms of private universities and its continuing disregard of Harvard’s compliance with the law,” Dr. Garber said in the letter to Linda McMahon, the secretary of education.
The university’s response came one week after Ms. McMahon wrote to Harvard to advise the university against applying for future grants, “since none will be provided.” That letter provoked new worries inside Harvard about the long-term consequences of its clash with the Trump administration.
“At its best, a university should fulfill the highest ideals of our nation, and enlighten the thousands of hopeful students who walk through its magnificent gates,” Ms. McMahon wrote. “But Harvard has betrayed its ideal.”
Rolling through a roster of conservative complaints about the school, Ms. McMahon fumed about the university’s “bloated bureaucracy,” its admissions policies, its international students, its embrace of some Democrats and even its mathematics curriculum.
Ms. McMahon referred to Harvard as “a publicly funded institution,” even though Harvard is private and the vast majority of its revenue does not come from the government. She suggested that the university rely more on its own funds, noting that Harvard’s endowment, valued at more than $53 billion, would give it a “head start.” (Much of Harvard’s endowment is tied up in restricted funds and cannot be repurposed at will.)
“Today’s letter,” Ms. McMahon wrote, “marks the end of new grants for the university.”
In Dr. Garber’s letter on Monday, he said that the university had created a strategy to combat antisemitism and other bigotry, and had invested in the academic study of Judaism and related fields. But he said the university would not “surrender its core, legally-protected principles out of fear of unfounded retaliation by the federal government.”
He denied Ms. McMahon’s assertion that Harvard was political.
“It is neither Republican nor Democratic,” he said of the university. “It is not an arm of any other political party or movement. Nor will it ever be. Harvard is a place to bring people of all backgrounds together to learn in an inclusive environment where ideas flourish regardless of whether they are deemed ‘conservative,’ ‘liberal,’ or something else.”
Although Harvard is the nation’s wealthiest university by far, officials there have warned that federal cuts could have devastating consequences on the campus and beyond. During Harvard’s 2024 fiscal year, the university received about $687 million from the federal government for research, a sum that accounted for about 11 percent of the university’s revenue.
The government can block the flow of federal money through a process called debarment. But the procedure is laborious, and the outcome may be appealed. Experts on government contracting said Ms. McMahon’s letter indicated that the administration had not followed the ordinary procedure to blacklist a recipient of federal funds.
Harvard officials are aware that, even if they challenge the administration’s tactics successfully in court, Mr. Trump’s government could still take other steps to choke off money that would be harder to fight.
The federal government often sets priorities for research that shape agencies’ day-to-day decisions about how and where federal dollars are spent. Some academics worry that the government might pivot away from fields of study in which Harvard has deep expertise, effectively shutting out the university’s researchers. Or the administration could simply assert that Harvard’s proposals were incompatible with the government’s needs.
Jessica Tillipman, an expert on government contracting law at George Washington University, said that it can be difficult to show that the government is using a back door to blacklist a grant recipient.
“You basically have to demonstrate and point to concrete evidence, not just a feeling,” she said.
Still, she said, Ms. McMahon’s letter could offer Harvard an opening to contest a protracted run of grant denials.
“It’s not as hard to prove,” Ms. Tillipman said, “when you have a giant letter that said, by the way, we aren’t giving you these things anymore.”
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