Last week, a former student at St. Paul's School was sentenced to a year in jail for having sex with an underage student — a development that could bring more scrutiny to one of America's most prestigious boarding schools.
A jury found Owen Labrie, now 20, guilty of a misdemeanor regarding the girl's age but cleared him of more serious assault charges this summer.
Steven J. Kelly, a lawyer who represents the victim’s family, is now investigating the school, according the New Hampshire Union Leader, which noted the school itself had not yet faced litigation over the incident.
At the center of this case is the “senior salute” tradition, in which outgoing senior students try to hook up with younger students and keep "score" of their conquests, according to the Daily Beast.
“This would not have happened had it not been for the culture of the school, and specifically the senior salute,” Kelly told the Union Leader on Friday. “This is basically a game designed to encourage statutory rape, to have upper-class students target under-class students.”
However, a former student told the Daily Beast in August that she rejected the notion that the “senior salute” was sordid and predatory, though did concede that “it is a coined term and tradition."
"[B]ut it’s really just hooking up with underclassmen," she said. "People at St. Paul’s call it ‘scoring.'”
She also spoke highly of Labrie, saying he was a, "well-rounded kid, very personable, and was going to Harvard on a full scholarship. He wasn't a spoiled, pretentious, typical prep school kid."
The St. Paul’s administration told police the school had been trying to educate against “sexual scoring” on campus, according to the Concord Monitor, which cited a police affidavit.
If Kelly decides to bring this case to court, the lawsuit would rest on the concept of “loco parentis,” in which schools have the responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of their students, much like parents do, Richard Lehmann, a Concord attorney, told the Union Leader.
Other high-caliber boarding schools, like Hotchkiss in Connecticut, have been subjected to lawsuits over criminal sexual behavior. But in Hotchkiss' case, the alleged perpetrator was a teacher and not a fellow student.
The current rector of St. Paul’s (a position similar to a headmaster or a principal at the Episcopal affiliated school), Michael Hirschfeld, flatly rejects the notion that the school's culture encourages "sexual conquest."
In a statement released in September, Hirschfeld said that the “[senior salute] is not a decades old tradition as some have alleged. The phrase ‘senior salute’ described a wide range of behaviors related to spending time with other students — none of these behaviors was ever understood to include any type of ‘game’ or sexual conquest.”
The statement continued: “School culture must not be equated with the behavior of one, or even several individuals within the community. The allegations about St. Paul’s were not — and are not emblematic of our School, or our values, our rules, or our student body, alumni, faculty, and staff. Those claims just simply aren’t true.”