A Manhattan couple is suing the elite Spence School, saying the Upper East Side all-girls academy bought into a “Mean Girls”-like scheme by a pair of classmates to brand their daughter a racist, humiliating her in front of her entire grade over an ultimately innocent Instagram post about Halloween costumes.
Parents Adam and Michelle Parker filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday against the private school — whose alums include actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Kerry Washington and Emmy Rossum — on behalf of their 16-year-old sophomore daughter, saying her “reputation has been ruined” over the debacle.
“This action arises from The Spence School’s egregious and unconscionable actions … in targeting a minor child who The Spence School and its administrators were charged to protect but instead falsely accused of acts of racism and anti-Semitism and publicly accused of engaging in racist conduct to a large swath of the Spence community,” the suit reads.
On Oct. 29, the Parkers’ daughter, identified only as D.P., made a private Instagram post — viewable only by friends — showing a series of text messages she had with two pals from outside of the school about potential group costume ideas after one friend joked that they should go as math “functions.”
D.P. responded that she didn’t want a “school” costume, and to “drive home her point” made a list of trios she didn’t want to dress up as — including: “Slaves, indigenous people, white settlers?” “Hitler, mussolini, stalin?” “Racism, sexism, anti-semitism?” “Sin, cos, tan?” and “American idealism, American intentions, the reality of America?” the suit says.
“Ok guys lets actually think,” she says at the end.
The next day, the “daughters of two prominent, high-profile families lauded in the Spence community and beyond” confronted D.P. and “claimed they were offended” by the post. The girl was “taken aback” but wanted “to be sensitive” so apologized, took the post down and hugged it out with the girls, the suit states.
But in a move worthy of the 2004 Tina Fey-Lindsay Lohan flick about backstabbing high school girls, the duo instead told another student about the post, and together they “concocted a plan to report D.P. to the Spence Administration in an effort to get her in trouble …. for reasons that had nothing to do with the content of D.P.’s post,” the suit alleges.
Three of those other students — none of whom had seen the post themselves — then reported D.P. to school administrators, saying she’d “made a post on Instagram that joked about dressing up as slaves and slaveholders, Jews and Hitler, and indigenous people” and that a black student had been offended by it, the suit charges.
Administrators then “ambushed” D.P. and “accused her of an act of racism and anti-Semitism,” ordering her to apologize to the offended student — who had herself admitted she hadn’t seen the post, but “just hearing about it was so hurtful and offensive.”
A bawling D.P. was ordered to apologize multiple times until she “racialized” her language in accordance with the school’s race an diversity training, finally saying “’as a white girl’ she was sorry that she undermined the oppression of black people and slavery,” the suit claims.
The next day, administrators held an assembly for all 10th graders to discuss the “incident” where they didn’t name D.P. but “falsely” said a student “had paired ‘slaves and slave owners’ and ‘Jews and Hitler’ together to create oppressed-oppressor associations” and suggested dressing as them for Halloween, the court document claims.
Afterwards, students began asking why D.P. hadn’t been punished for such a seemingly racist act, and the school “succumbed to the mob,” with Head of Upper School, Michèle Krauthamer suspending her for a day, saying they needed to “give restitution to the community,” the suit charges.
When the Parkers confronted Krauthamer and asked if she’d even read the post, she admitted she hadn’t, and they finally showed it to all of the administrators involved, and they agreed to reduce the punishment to a half day of “in-home reflection.”
The Parkers then met in person with Head of School Ellanor Brizendine and showed her the actual post, at which point she became “visibly flustered” and admitted that when D.P. was punished “we did not have this,” the suit alleges.
“[W]e didn’t have the Post. We didn’t ask for it. We didn’t read it. The consequences of that have been significant💖,” she allegedly says in audio linked to in the lawsuit.
Ever since, the Parkers have been trying to get the school to “correct and retract their false and defamatory statements about D.P.” but claim the school has refused and has instead “zealously protected its own public persona and reputation.”
Meanwhile, they say they’ve brought to the school’s attention an Instagram account called “ladymemers” run by many of their daughter’s classmates — including the student she was forced to apologize to, the daughter of a Spence teacher, and the daughter of a Board of Trustee officer — that often included “racist, homophobic, sexually explicit and other vulgar content.”
But not only has no student ever reported the account to the administration for offensive content, the school hasn’t disciplined any of the students involved as they did D.P. — and within hours of the Parkers reporting it to the school, it was suddenly made private, the suit charges.
The Parkers are seeking unspecified damages for defamation, alleging its actions have “caused D.P. severe emotional distress and left her emotionally and psychologically scarred and traumatized.”
The Spence School responded in a statement, “Our primary concern is always the welfare of our students. We have tried very hard to resolve the Parkers’ concerns for their daughter – and address both the underlying post and the community’s reaction – in a compassionate, thoughtful and conciliatory manner.
“Commencing a lawsuit against our school and involving minor children in a misguided attempt to vindicate their daughter, destroys the community values we strive to embrace at the Spence School.”