This is really interesting – parents of a student in a very prestigious school are suing because they expelled him for saying politically incorrect things about transgender people.
From the Connecticut Law Tribune:
The college preparatory school’s associate head, David Dykeman, was served Wednesday with the lawsuit, filed against Cheshire Academy and two top officials: Julie Anderson, head of schools, and Wesley Simon, the dean.
The three-count lawsuit alleges breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and defamation at the academy that was founded in 1794 and is now one of the oldest boarding schools in the country. Boarding and tuition costs about $62,000 per year, according to information on the school’s website.
But the lawsuit alleges fellow students criticized and verbally attacked Michael Mancini, a member of the school’s football team, because of his conservative views, which was known among staff and students.
Mancini was expelled from the school on Tuesday, one day after his father, Theodore, unveiled a website chronicling his son’s tenure at the school. The site is called “The Real Cheshire Academy” and, according to Mancini’s attorney, Jamie Sullivan, the website “soon went viral among the kids at the school and kids from other prep schools.”
“The school also knew that the family has retained an attorney,” said Sullivan, a managing partner at Howard Kohn Sprague & FitzGerald. “I had written a letter threatening a lawsuit.”
Sullivan said in the wake of Mancini’s immediate expulsion, his parents would soon be amending the complaint to demand that Cheshire Academy allow him to return to school. The suit also seeks unspecified monetary damages.
He got kicked out over comments he made about the historical plight of transgender persons in the time of Shakespeare (!):
In one incident outlined in the lawsuit, Mancini made some general observations in an English class at the academy, allegedly prompting several students to yell at him. The class was discussing William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” when Mancini stated the play was not historically accurate with regard to a cross-dresser because that behavior was frowned on in England at the time. Some in the class, Sullivan said, thought the reference of Viola, who crossed-dressed as a man, portrayed transgenderism in a positive light.
“Michael was verbally attacked and screamed at by two students for making those comments, for his opinion,” the lawsuit states. After the incident, the lawsuit said, Mancini and his teacher had a conversation on “how to steer clear of language that can upset others.”
Dang, that’s some pretty second level literary analysis. Sounds like a pretty bright kid!
And over this pretty innocent joke:
In another incident, Mancini was suspended for five days for jokingly answering, “Obviously, I am black” when a teacher asked him in a mandatory Martin Luther King Jr. workshop to tell the class something about his identity. The lawsuit said students of all colors laughed at the comment and that Mancini had apologized several times.
Wow. The school isn’t saying much, but if he was kicked out over those statements, they definitely have a case. On the other hand, why would you want your kid at such a liberal school?