From the Dad of a student accepted at Landon who decided to go elsewhere: Enough of the Landon bashing. Landon is a good school and I'm certain they are in the process of straightening the ship. There are lots of good teachers/coaches at Landon. Do they recruit for sports? Of course, as most privates have done for 3 generations. Are there some cocky kids there, and are some of the parents snobby? Yes, but not any more than most of the privates. The problems Landon experienced are now 5 plus years in the past. Time to move on and appreciate the school as a good option for lots of boys in Bethesda.

I had forgotten that cheating scandal...

Anonymous wrote:Let’s be honest. Those associated with Landon have a degree of cockiness and self-assuredness that drives a small subset of the other private school parents bonkers. It seems a bit embarrassing to be so obsessed with a school that your DS does not attend, but I wouldn’t say it is necessarily misandry because I think it is parents of boys in other private schools that are most put off by the Landon cockiness. In fairness, parents of boys from Prep and Gonzaga are pretty secure and you can tell that their sons are not intimidated by the Landon boys, but the parents of boys in more artsy schools that the parents see as academically superior can’t accept the prevailing social order where their sons are viewed as “second tier” or worse. For these parents there seems to be plenty of data to support their view that their sons, not Landon, Prep and Gonzaga boys, should be at the top of the heap. Alas, it just isn’t so. The bashing thus serves two purposes – attempting to humble Landon and address the injustice of the prevailing social order.

Second the "jerk-off" comment. This is so bad that it almost could be someone deliberately trying to hurt Landon with a smug and repugnant post full of veiled and ugly allusions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no reason to do it publically or to include the press. Just do it quietly and let the new seep out slowly over time.

Outsiders do care because they were those kids were children who made mistakes which resulted in their lives being ripped apart. As if that punishment were not bad enough, they also have had to live with the injustice that several of their classmates were allowed to graduate and remain in good standing while those who were expelled remain outcasts.

There is no logical reason why these individual should for the rest of their lives suffer the stigma of being outcasts when the school for complicated reasons chose to punish some students more harshly than others.

Until this unfortunate page in Landon's history is resolved it will never be forgotten. It will forever frighten prospective students away until everyone applying for acceptance can be assured that the ol' boy system at the school has been dismantled and all students will be treated equally in the future.

A new Board of Directors has recently been elected. They can begin anew by quietly correcting this mistake made by an earlier generation of Directors.

Most people applying have little understanding or knowledge as to who got expelled and why. The current students would have no idea who you are talking about. All three school headmaster's are new as well as Mr. Armstrong.

Unfortunately, life is not fair. People are not always treated equally. I also agree with the PP that you seem way to invested to be an innocent bystander. At least be honest and say why you care about this so much.

Personally, if this happened to my son, I coudl care less that the school would "forgive" me. They all seemed to have moved on with life. Perhaps you should as well.

Why shouldn't I care? I care about injustices where ever they may occur. Do you not feel the same way? If you don't speak up for others, who will speak up when they come for you. Of course that's a paraphrase, but I'm sure you get the gist. Would you never stand up for another person unles you have vested interest? Hopefully that's not the case?

You wouldn't want to be an outcast from the people with whom you spent so much of your youth, so my verbiage is not melodramatic. The Supreme Court reverses its decisions all the time, so reversing a couple of expulsions from a relatively small private school seems very doable.

It's the prudent thing to do!

Until the subject comes up again - I'm out.

Let's get real. I care about injustices. Let's put this in perspective:

Here are a few examples:

The VA scandal
The stolen girls of Uganda
the Sudan
Kid in the inner city that can''t get a decent education
Soldiers coming back from a tour of duty who can't find a job
People and organziations that got their money stolen by Bernie Madoof
the teacher who died at Magruder last week who left 2 young kids
Young kids who get cancer


Now let's look at what you keep railing about: a kid who got expelled from a private school for cheating who went on to college



enough said

Good one.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no reason to do it publically or to include the press. Just do it quietly and let the new seep out slowly over time.

Outsiders do care because they were those kids were children who made mistakes which resulted in their lives being ripped apart. As if that punishment were not bad enough, they also have had to live with the injustice that several of their classmates were allowed to graduate and remain in good standing while those who were expelled remain outcasts.

There is no logical reason why these individual should for the rest of their lives suffer the stigma of being outcasts when the school for complicated reasons chose to punish some students more harshly than others.

Until this unfortunate page in Landon's history is resolved it will never be forgotten. It will forever frighten prospective students away until everyone applying for acceptance can be assured that the ol' boy system at the school has been dismantled and all students will be treated equally in the future.

A new Board of Directors has recently been elected. They can begin anew by quietly correcting this mistake made by an earlier generation of Directors.

Most people applying have little understanding or knowledge as to who got expelled and why. The current students would have no idea who you are talking about. All three school headmaster's are new as well as Mr. Armstrong.

Unfortunately, life is not fair. People are not always treated equally. I also agree with the PP that you seem way to invested to be an innocent bystander. At least be honest and say why you care about this so much.

Personally, if this happened to my son, I coudl care less that the school would "forgive" me. They all seemed to have moved on with life. Perhaps you should as well.

Why shouldn't I care? I care about injustices where ever they may occur. Do you not feel the same way? If you don't speak up for others, who will speak up when they come for you. Of course that's a paraphrase, but I'm sure you get the gist. Would you never stand up for another person unles you have vested interest? Hopefully that's not the case?

You wouldn't want to be an outcast from the people with whom you spent so much of your youth, so my verbiage is not melodramatic. The Supreme Court reverses its decisions all the time, so reversing a couple of expulsions from a relatively small private school seems very doable.

It's the prudent thing to do!

Until the subject comes up again - I'm out.

Let's get real. I care about injustices. Let's put this in perspective:

Here are a few examples:

The VA scandal
The stolen girls of Uganda
the Sudan
Kid in the inner city that can''t get a decent education
Soldiers coming back from a tour of duty who can't find a job
People and organziations that got their money stolen by Bernie Madoof
the teacher who died at Magruder last week who left 2 young kids
Young kids who get cancer


Now let's look at what you keep railing about: a kid who got expelled from a private school for cheating who went on to college



enough said

PP again. And to be fair, I know some Landon families who are not like that, so I'm sure it's just a jerkoff subset.

^^^ That's the kind of jerkoff comment that makes me dislike Landon.

Let’s be honest. Those associated with Landon have a degree of cockiness and self-assuredness that drives a small subset of the other private school parents bonkers. It seems a bit embarrassing to be so obsessed with a school that your DS does not attend, but I wouldn’t say it is necessarily misandry because I think it is parents of boys in other private schools that are most put off by the Landon cockiness. In fairness, parents of boys from Prep and Gonzaga are pretty secure and you can tell that their sons are not intimidated by the Landon boys, but the parents of boys in more artsy schools that the parents see as academically superior can’t accept the prevailing social order where their sons are viewed as “second tier” or worse. For these parents there seems to be plenty of data to support their view that their sons, not Landon, Prep and Gonzaga boys, should be at the top of the heap. Alas, it just isn’t so. The bashing thus serves two purposes – attempting to humble Landon and address the injustice of the prevailing social order.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's no reason to do it publically or to include the press. Just do it quietly and let the new seep out slowly over time.

Outsiders do care because they were those kids were children who made mistakes which resulted in their lives being ripped apart. As if that punishment were not bad enough, they also have had to live with the injustice that several of their classmates were allowed to graduate and remain in good standing while those who were expelled remain outcasts.

There is no logical reason why these individual should for the rest of their lives suffer the stigma of being outcasts when the school for complicated reasons chose to punish some students more harshly than others.

Until this unfortunate page in Landon's history is resolved it will never be forgotten. It will forever frighten prospective students away until everyone applying for acceptance can be assured that the ol' boy system at the school has been dismantled and all students will be treated equally in the future.

A new Board of Directors has recently been elected. They can begin anew by quietly correcting this mistake made by an earlier generation of Directors.

Most people applying have little understanding or knowledge as to who got expelled and why. The current students would have no idea who you are talking about. All three school headmaster's are new as well as Mr. Armstrong.

Unfortunately, life is not fair. People are not always treated equally. I also agree with the PP that you seem way to invested to be an innocent bystander. At least be honest and say why you care about this so much.

Personally, if this happened to my son, I coudl care less that the school would "forgive" me. They all seemed to have moved on with life. Perhaps you should as well.

Why shouldn't I care? I care about injustices where ever they may occur. Do you not feel the same way? If you don't speak up for others, who will speak up when they come for you. Of course that's a paraphrase, but I'm sure you get the gist. Would you never stand up for another person unles you have vested interest? Hopefully that's not the case?

You wouldn't want to be an outcast from the people with whom you spent so much of your youth, so my verbiage is not melodramatic. The Supreme Court reverses its decisions all the time, so reversing a couple of expulsions from a relatively small private school seems very doable.

It's the prudent thing to do!

Until the subject comes up again - I'm out.

Anonymous wrote:There's no reason to do it publically or to include the press. Just do it quietly and let the new seep out slowly over time.

Outsiders do care because they were those kids were children who made mistakes which resulted in their lives being ripped apart. As if that punishment were not bad enough, they also have had to live with the injustice that several of their classmates were allowed to graduate and remain in good standing while those who were expelled remain outcasts.

There is no logical reason why these individual should for the rest of their lives suffer the stigma of being outcasts when the school for complicated reasons chose to punish some students more harshly than others.

Until this unfortunate page in Landon's history is resolved it will never be forgotten. It will forever frighten prospective students away until everyone applying for acceptance can be assured that the ol' boy system at the school has been dismantled and all students will be treated equally in the future.

A new Board of Directors has recently been elected. They can begin anew by quietly correcting this mistake made by an earlier generation of Directors.

Most people applying have little understanding or knowledge as to who got expelled and why. The current students would have no idea who you are talking about. All three school headmaster's are new as well as Mr. Armstrong.

Unfortunately, life is not fair. People are not always treated equally. I also agree with the PP that you seem way to invested to be an innocent bystander. At least be honest and say why you care about this so much.

Personally, if this happened to my son, I coudl care less that the school would "forgive" me. They all seemed to have moved on with life. Perhaps you should as well.

Anonymous wrote:There's no reason to do it publically or to include the press. Just do it quietly and let the new seep out slowly over time.

Outsiders do care because they were those kids were children who made mistakes which resulted in their lives being ripped apart. As if that punishment were not bad enough, they also have had to live with the injustice that several of their classmates were allowed to graduate and remain in good standing while those who were expelled remain outcasts.

There is no logical reason why these individual should for the rest of their lives suffer the stigma of being outcasts when the school for complicated reasons chose to punish some students more harshly than others.

Until this unfortunate page in Landon's history is resolved it will never be forgotten. It will forever frighten prospective students away until everyone applying for acceptance can be assured that the ol' boy system at the school has been dismantled and all students will be treated equally in the future.

A new Board of Directors has recently been elected. They can begin anew by quietly correcting this mistake made by an earlier generation of Directors.

A few points:

1. It really does not seem credible that you are an "outsider." If not a family member of someone affected, you sound at least like a friend of the family (and my bet is on family). And you seem pretty knowledgeable about Landon.

2. Although you say "there's only one way to view the event," that means YOU only see it in one way. And there's nothing wrong with being so passionate about a position that you cannot admit you could be wrong. But you need at least to recognize that other people CAN and DO view the event differently -- that is the reality of the situation, as this thread shows.

3. Again, as it has been pointed out, to the extent the issue still harms Landon, most people on the outside just remember the fact of the cheating and not the more internal controversy about different punishments.

4. The use of "outcasts" in the sense of lifetime "outcasts" bearing a "stigma" seems a little overheated. It's 10+ years ago and everyone is out of college.

5. Pragmatically, a new board is not going to step in and second-guess what was, in the last analysis, a discretionary decision by a prior Head of School/Board.

There's no reason to do it publically or to include the press. Just do it quietly and let the new seep out slowly over time.

Outsiders do care because they were those kids were children who made mistakes which resulted in their lives being ripped apart. As if that punishment were not bad enough, they also have had to live with the injustice that several of their classmates were allowed to graduate and remain in good standing while those who were expelled remain outcasts.

There is no logical reason why these individual should for the rest of their lives suffer the stigma of being outcasts when the school for complicated reasons chose to punish some students more harshly than others.

Until this unfortunate page in Landon's history is resolved it will never be forgotten. It will forever frighten prospective students away until everyone applying for acceptance can be assured that the ol' boy system at the school has been dismantled and all students will be treated equally in the future.

A new Board of Directors has recently been elected. They can begin anew by quietly correcting this mistake made by an earlier generation of Directors.

Anonymous wrote:Because there is no reason to go back to something that happened so long ago - and just rehash the press/issue publicly. No one but the people specifically involved care about this now - really. This thread has gotten very repetitive and is probably scaring off families from Landon if alums or their families cannot let things go after so many years.

the person that keeps this point going claims they are not even a Landon family. Hard to figure why the person cares so much.

Because there is no reason to go back to something that happened so long ago - and just rehash the press/issue publicly. No one but the people specifically involved care about this now - really. This thread has gotten very repetitive and is probably scaring off families from Landon if alums or their families cannot let things go after so many years.

There is only one way to view the event.

The original offenses committed by all warranted the harshest of punishments which was expulsion. So if expulsion was on the table it should have been the punishment for all. Of course I'm being ridiculous now, but for the second offense of not having good judgement when their world was collapsing around them, for those who were expelled, they could have been expelled twice.

The case is very muddled for a variety of reasons, but the most obvious reason for Mr. Armstrong and the Board to reverse that mistaken decision to expell from eleven years ago is to simply say justice was not distributed equally.

It would say to the world that this is a different era today, this is different Board of Directors today, we have a different world view today, and we do things differently today!

Ten years from now all of the boys present that day at Landon and Holton would be able to meet, embrace, and breath a sigh of relief. Why if you have the power to facilitate the redemption of so many people would you stand on ceremony and not do so?