Students arrive at the Horace Mann School on February 4, 2004 in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York.
An elite New York City private school with a reputation for cut-throat competition is investigating the attempted sabotage of a student’s college applications.
According to a letter sent to the senior class and obtained by the Wall Street Journal, someone sent false and disparaging information about the Horace Mann student to the applicant’s schools.
The letter, written by Canh Oxelson, director of college counseling at the scandal-plagued Bronx private school, says the school is still investigating who allegedly sent the false information. Horace Mann administrators did not respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.
Oxelson wrote that since the allegations arose several weeks ago, he has faced questions like, “What does it say about Horace Mann that a member of our community would do something like this?” He wrote:
“In 20 years of college admissions, I have never witnessed anything so disrespectful. For a student to have worked so hard for so many years, only to see those efforts jeopardized by an act of sabotage is absolutely unconscionable. This letter is an assault on the core values of this community, which is why it was determined that seniors should know what happened…
When a member of our community does something so egregious, it makes people question what’s happening here. It feeds the perception that we are hypercompetitive to the point of being unhealthy. This isn’t a good message for our students, our families, or for people who are on the outside looking in.”
[WSJ]
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