I don’t think the parents are nut jobs. If they didn’t have a case in the first place, it seems unlikely that Sidwell would have agreed to a settlement, especially a high one and change grades. Additionally, it does seem odd that this same student would be the only kid in the whole class not to get into a college - including Spellman, where it seems she would have had a very strong chance coming from Sidwell, without the possibility of some negative info. If she was a disastrous student, why Would Penn agree to take her one year later? What changed?

Anonymous wrote:Just read this. It sounds clear that these parents are whacko nutjobs who probably did more to hurt than help their kids. It also appears clear to me that Sidwell retaliated and decided that Dayo should go to Spellman instead of an Ivy, and did everything they could to make that happen.

Eh, you reap what you sow.....I have zero sympathy for the family and one can only imagine the height of their douchbaggery to provoke such a response from SFS.

Just read this. It sounds clear that these parents are whacko nutjobs who probably did more to hurt than help their kids. It also appears clear to me that Sidwell retaliated and decided that Dayo should go to Spellman instead of an Ivy, and did everything they could to make that happen.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe you should have gone to a public school where you could have taken whatever AP classes you wanted to take?

If it were my decision! It was my parent's decision to send me to a private school because they believed they were paying for me to gain acceptance into a top tier school. Sound familiar?

Maybe you should have gone to a public school where you could have taken whatever AP classes you wanted to take?

Anonymous wrote:Thread title is completely backwards. Sidwell is to be paid BY the family due to their frivolous case. The family LOST in court and while Sidwell agreed to REVIEW the daughter’s grades early on in the dispute they made no promises and only changed one grade from an A- to an A due to a minor miscalculation.

So the system worked. Sidwell upheld their standards. Courts rewarded them for it.

So basically a probably Rich Family has a smart kid and is SHOCKED she doesn’t get into all the ivies after probably shelling out a small fortune for private schools they asssumed would get her there. Sounds like a lot of wealthy parents everywhere and especially on DCUM.

What foolish atty agreed to take this case all the way to SCOTUS is the real crazy story. I can’t imagine the legal fees the family racked up. Guess legal team thought the school would cave in embarrassment. Good for Sidwell that they held their own.

I'm a white male who went to a private school in Atlanta for 13 years. I graduated at the bottom half of my class with a 3.6 GPA and found it immensely difficult to get into any notable schools like UGA. I had to write a letter each week for months to get a pity offer from a school in North Carolina. I watched rich students be placed ahead of me the entirety of my time there in AP courses freshman year of high school that I qualified for in middle school, yet did did not get selected. I always wondered if it was because my family was not particularly rich. Those other students excelled while I became disillusioned. My family was mad as all hell that I did not gain acceptance to the schools that they thought they had paid for in sending me to an acclaimed private school. I also watched as black students of rich families were given scholarships and special opportunities, even though they performed on-par or worse than I did in the same classes. Another black student, a best friend, came from a very poor family and was not given ANY of the opportunities that the rich whites or blacks were given and he was forced to be the first student in my living memory from that school who did NOT go to college and instead joined the Air Force.

Now - those rich students are struggling with finding an appropriate career to sustain their rich lifestyles, despite the advantages academia gave them. I struggle with a low paying job at a local PBS station, but I am doing my art and am happy. My best friend who joined the Air Force is able to transition to the civilian life making $80k off of a great IT education he received in the service.

I tell this story because as much as people would like to gripe about the impacts of education on a person's future - they themselves determine their success. Not their parents. Not their schools. Not even their own academic performance. THEY do. If Dayo Adetu has a good well-rounded head on her shoulders, with a good heart, and determination to succeed - she will. Her parent's money will never buy her life satisfaction or career success. I hope this lawsuit doesn't teach her that threatening yields positive results. I hope she found a good hobby that she is passionate about. All this nonsense about "college placement" is a HUGE racket for schools to accumulate wealth and it is such a waste of money and time for frivolous lawsuits. If ANYONE deserved a lawsuit - it would be my best friend who was completely failed by the private school system. But, with that being said, he is in a better position in his career than anyone I knew taking out crazy loans for a degree they will most likely never actually work in the field.

Anonymous wrote:$50k apparently was to settle the suit and make it go away.
The grade change was apparently a correction, which presumably what part of the suit was about.

There is already a long thread on this.

Did the family also have to pay $40k in legal costs incurred by the school?

Anonymous wrote:Thread title is completely backwards. Sidwell is to be paid BY the family due to their frivolous case. The family LOST in court and while Sidwell agreed to REVIEW the daughter’s grades early on in the dispute they made no promises and only changed one grade from an A- to an A due to a minor miscalculation.

So the system worked. Sidwell upheld their standards. Courts rewarded them for it.

So basically a probably Rich Family has a smart kid and is SHOCKED she doesn’t get into all the ivies after probably shelling out a small fortune for private schools they asssumed would get her there. Sounds like a lot of wealthy parents everywhere and especially on DCUM.

What foolish atty agreed to take this case all the way to SCOTUS is the real crazy story. I can’t imagine the legal fees the family racked up. Guess legal team thought the school would cave in embarrassment. Good for Sidwell that they held their own.

You have zero reading comp.

Anonymous wrote:Thread title is completely backwards. Sidwell is to be paid BY the family due to their frivolous case. The family LOST in court and while Sidwell agreed to REVIEW the daughter’s grades early on in the dispute they made no promises and only changed one grade from an A- to an A due to a minor miscalculation.

So the system worked. Sidwell upheld their standards. Courts rewarded them for it.

So basically a probably Rich Family has a smart kid and is SHOCKED she doesn’t get into all the ivies after probably shelling out a small fortune for private schools they asssumed would get her there. Sounds like a lot of wealthy parents everywhere and especially on DCUM.

What foolish atty agreed to take this case all the way to SCOTUS is the real crazy story. I can’t imagine the legal fees the family racked up. Guess legal team thought the school would cave in embarrassment. Good for Sidwell that they held their own.

Huh?

Thread title is completely backwards. Sidwell is to be paid BY the family due to their frivolous case. The family LOST in court and while Sidwell agreed to REVIEW the daughter’s grades early on in the dispute they made no promises and only changed one grade from an A- to an A due to a minor miscalculation.

So the system worked. Sidwell upheld their standards. Courts rewarded them for it.

So basically a probably Rich Family has a smart kid and is SHOCKED she doesn’t get into all the ivies after probably shelling out a small fortune for private schools they asssumed would get her there. Sounds like a lot of wealthy parents everywhere and especially on DCUM.

What foolish atty agreed to take this case all the way to SCOTUS is the real crazy story. I can’t imagine the legal fees the family racked up. Guess legal team thought the school would cave in embarrassment. Good for Sidwell that they held their own.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/06/sidwell-friends-college-admissions-varsity-blues/591124/

Atlantic article about Sidwell parent behavior. Links to DCUM.

2 other threads, but thanks for turning the horse to glue.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/06/sidwell-friends-college-admissions-varsity-blues/591124/

Atlantic article about Sidwell parent behavior. Links to DCUM.

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Anonymous wrote:It's certainly possible the family's suit is flimsy, but it's also possible the Sidwell was a bad actor.

Given what's publicly known, which one is the likelier possibility in your opinion and why?

PP here. I don't think I have sufficient facts to say with any certainty--do you? It's certainly possible both parties bear some responsibility for the outcome.

No one is asking for certainly. I'm simply trying to ascertain, based on your best guess, how the blame should be apportioned. You seem to think it's 50/50 or close to it, correct?

I have no idea, and I don’t think it’s important to apportion blame by percentages. I imagine both sides contributed to this mess. I am disappointed that many people on this thread are jumping to the conclusion the family of color are opportunists and scammers, and that Sidwell is squeaky clean. In my observation it seems that people of color may need to resort to taking what would be seen by white people as extreme action in instances where they believe there were not treated fairly. I do not know this family, and I do not presume to speak for them. To white people in our culture their actions may look shady, but perhaps seek to understand what it might be like to experience an undercurrent of bias in society and then experience this situation.

Sidwell is hyper-sensitive to any appearance of racial insensitivity to the point where they will give more leeway to students of color. My take is that this family is leveraging that advantage to get what they want. Not saying it's right or wrong, but the current climate certainly empowered their course of action.

In my experience the hypersensitive people are the white people (not just talking at Sidwell) who are hypersensitive when anyone dares to point out that race and implicit bias play a role every single day in the experience of black people and brown people in a way that disadvantages and burdens them. When I make a conscious effort to consider whether implicit bias or racism (broad definition of unconscious racism) is playing a role in how I am interacting with a person of color or whether my understanding of the situation is wrong I get pushback and defensiveness from white people (I’m white). Just pointing out that parents seemed to be judging a black boys behavior more harshly than the same behavior by a white boy resulted in my white friends getting pissed at me. Maybe what you perceive as giving more leeway is really just people correcting for the implicit bias they have come to recognize.

+1. This is a difficult conversation, one that goes beyond Sidwell, and is it one that people, esp white people, do not want to have. I think it’s why we are more comfortable shutting this thread down, blaming the parents or calling them scammers, complaining about the unfairness or reverse racism, rather than considering that there’s also a greater systemic issue that may play into what’s going on. (I am white btw).

Except that the parents are scammers and blame others for their daughter's perceived bad luck. Penn, not Yale. Oh, the shame!

+1.

But it is all because of the British Empire and how they colonized Nigeria, destroying the hopes for this lovely family and student.

I may have missed this in their Supreme Court petition!

For shame.

This thread is still silly.

No reasonable person would mock the history of black exclusion (not really history, see Boston public schools and U-Texas mid-seventies), neither would they argue "being white" is in itself an "advantage", without putting that into some kind of context.

Then again, no reasonable person would pile onto 10 levels of comments upon comments. So, there it is. Silly.

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Anonymous wrote:It's certainly possible the family's suit is flimsy, but it's also possible the Sidwell was a bad actor.

Given what's publicly known, which one is the likelier possibility in your opinion and why?

PP here. I don't think I have sufficient facts to say with any certainty--do you? It's certainly possible both parties bear some responsibility for the outcome.

No one is asking for certainly. I'm simply trying to ascertain, based on your best guess, how the blame should be apportioned. You seem to think it's 50/50 or close to it, correct?

I have no idea, and I don’t think it’s important to apportion blame by percentages. I imagine both sides contributed to this mess. I am disappointed that many people on this thread are jumping to the conclusion the family of color are opportunists and scammers, and that Sidwell is squeaky clean. In my observation it seems that people of color may need to resort to taking what would be seen by white people as extreme action in instances where they believe there were not treated fairly. I do not know this family, and I do not presume to speak for them. To white people in our culture their actions may look shady, but perhaps seek to understand what it might be like to experience an undercurrent of bias in society and then experience this situation.

Sidwell is hyper-sensitive to any appearance of racial insensitivity to the point where they will give more leeway to students of color. My take is that this family is leveraging that advantage to get what they want. Not saying it's right or wrong, but the current climate certainly empowered their course of action.

In my experience the hypersensitive people are the white people (not just talking at Sidwell) who are hypersensitive when anyone dares to point out that race and implicit bias play a role every single day in the experience of black people and brown people in a way that disadvantages and burdens them. When I make a conscious effort to consider whether implicit bias or racism (broad definition of unconscious racism) is playing a role in how I am interacting with a person of color or whether my understanding of the situation is wrong I get pushback and defensiveness from white people (I’m white). Just pointing out that parents seemed to be judging a black boys behavior more harshly than the same behavior by a white boy resulted in my white friends getting pissed at me. Maybe what you perceive as giving more leeway is really just people correcting for the implicit bias they have come to recognize.

+1. This is a difficult conversation, one that goes beyond Sidwell, and is it one that people, esp white people, do not want to have. I think it’s why we are more comfortable shutting this thread down, blaming the parents or calling them scammers, complaining about the unfairness or reverse racism, rather than considering that there’s also a greater systemic issue that may play into what’s going on. (I am white btw).

Except that the parents are scammers and blame others for their daughter's perceived bad luck. Penn, not Yale. Oh, the shame!

+1.

But it is all because of the British Empire and how they colonized Nigeria, destroying the hopes for this lovely family and student.

I may have missed this in their Supreme Court petition!