An elite New Jersey boarding school has admitted that ‘more should have been done’ after a student took his own life in his dorm room following a year of bullying by his peers.
Jack Reid, 17, attended The Lawrenceville School, between Trenton and Princeton, where tuition is $76,000 a year.
He died on April 30, 2022, but in the 12 months leading up to his death he had become the victim of a vicious bullying campaign that consisted of cruel and malicious rumors that labelled him as a campus rapist.
The rumors were made up by fellow students and were said to Jack both in person and posted anonymously online thereby spreading the story beyond the campus walls.
During a secret Santa gift exchange among his classmates, Jack was given a rape whistle together with a book about how to make friends.
Although school staff were made aware of the bullying, the school has now admitted make an extraordinary admission of failure on the anniversary of Jack’s death.
‘There were steps that the School should in hindsight have taken but did not,’ the school wrote in a lengthy statement.
Most damning of all is the fact the school did not make a public or private statement that it had in fact investigated the rape and found the rumors about Jack and the entire story to be completely untrue.
Neither Jack not his parents were ever told that he had been exonerated over the claims.
The school’s officials have now admitted that they were aware of the bullying, but fell short in their obligation to protect him.
In a frank, honest and heart-wrenching admission the school, which ranks among the nation’s top boarding schools, believes Jack’s death could have been prevented and stated how ‘there also were circumstances in which the involvement of an adult would have made a difference.’
‘As we seek to improve as a community, we have examined our role and take responsibility for what we could have done differently. Lawrenceville’s top priority is the physical, social, and emotional health, safety, and wellbeing of our students. We recognize that in Jack’s case, we fell tragically short of these expectations,’ the statement read.
‘Jack was universally regarded as an extremely kind and good-hearted young man, with an unwavering sense of social and civic responsibility and a bright future. We continue to mourn this loss,’ the school wrote in the statement noting how a settlement had been reached with his parents, William and Elizabeth Reid.
The agreement requires the school, which hosts 830 students, to undertake a series of corrective actions, including creating a new dean’s position that will focus on mental health issues, with the goal of becoming a model for anti-bullying and student mental health.
‘We feel like we both have life sentences without the possibility of parole,’ Jack’s mother, Dr. Elizabeth Reid, a clinical psychologist, said to the New York Times.
‘The only thing I’d love to change here is to get Jack back. I can’t. I do know if he were alive, he would want me — both of us — to try to make something good out of this and honor him in the way he lived his life.’
‘We think bullying, with the 1,000 times echo chamber of the internet and everybody knowing, is much more devastating to kids and, in Jack’s case, produced a very impulsive act,’ dad, William Reid said.
‘He had to escape the pain from the humiliation he was feeling.’
The school explained how after a student who previously had been disciplined for bullying Jack was expelled for an unrelated violation of school rules, Jack was allowed to return the school but was left largely unsupervised where students gathered.
‘Some harsh words were said about Jack,’ the school revealed adding that administrators did not notify or check on Jack once he was back on campus.
Later that night, Jack, who was a Dean’s list student, took his own life, telling a friend that he could not go through the ordeal again.
He had a bible in one pocket of his gym shorts, as well as a note directing his parents to a Google document, in which he described his helplessness.
