CT: Miss Porter's School Sued Over Expulsion

By VANESSA DE LA TORRE The Hartford Courant
December 10, 2008
Tatum Bass appeared to be thriving at the elite Miss Porter's School in Farmington.
http://www.courant.com/news/education/hc-portersuit1210.artdec10,0,72753.story

The senior from South Carolina ran track and belonged to a Christian fellowship group. She traveled to Peru with other students to help renovate an orphanage and regularly made the honor roll. In a sign of the boarding student's social standing, her peers this year elected Bass to serve on the Nova Nine — a panel of nine seniors that leads the student body — as the student activities coordinator responsible for the prom and other events.

Then, over the past three months, Bass became a campus pariah and was expelled from the all-girls private school in November.

A federal lawsuit filed recently in U.S. District Court in New Haven contends that students in a "secret society" orchestrated a bullying campaign against Bass for her role early this school year in planning a multi-school prom. The "Oprichniki," as the group called itself according to the suit, apparently was named after the 16th-century Russian secret police that brutally eliminated the czar's enemies.

In the civil suit against Miss Porter's and its head of school, Katherine Windsor, Bass family attorneys say some girls, unhappy over the Nova Nine's plans to hold a joint prom with students from other schools, made Tatum Bass a target. The harassment weighed so heavily on Bass, according to the suit, that she missed about a week of school.

The suit says the school's decision last month to expel her was based largely on the unexcused absences and "violations of school rules." The suit also acknowledges that Bass was suspended from school this fall for cheating on a test.

But the lawsuit contends that Bass only cheated because she was frazzled by the harassment and that Windsor and other Miss Porter's officials neglected their duty to stop the abuse, despite repeated pleas for intervention from Bass and her parents.

School officials declined to comment on any aspect of the suit, including the existence of a Miss Porter's Oprichniki or school policies on bullying.

"It's very important for me to respect the privacy of the Bass family," Windsor said.

Classmates, the suit says, belittled Bass for having attention deficit disorder. They called her "retarded," yelled expletives at her at a school dance and taunted her — through "text messages, on Facebook and in person about being stupid and threatened to boycott the prom because of her," the suit says.

The family is seeking a judgment voiding the expulsion as improper, along with Bass' reinstatement at Miss Porter's as a student in good standing and a temporary injunction preventing the school from reporting the expulsion to colleges where Bass has applications pending. The lawsuit also seeks more than $75,000 in damages and legal fees.

Attorney Heather Spaide of the Bridgeport firm Cohen and Wolf P.C., which is representing Tatum Bass, did not return requests for comment.

The Oprichniki
The lawsuit singles out the girls in the Oprichniki as responsible for much of the harassment.

"Oprichniki members were at the forefront of taunting Tatum in class and advising others" about her ADD, the suit says.

Some students also circulated a petition within the senior class that sought to cancel out Bass' vote as a member of the Nova Nine in an attempt to derail plans for the multi-school prom, according to the lawsuit.

The original Oprichniki were ruthless loyalists to Ivan the Terrible. Dressed in black, they rode through the Russian countryside on black horses and carriages and were said to impale, drown, hang, mutilate and sometimes boil alive any suspected traitors. Their emblem — a dog's head and a broom — was a reminder of how efficient they were in sniffing and sweeping out the czar's enemies.

Bill Bass, president of an insurance agency, and Nina Bass, a pediatric psychiatrist, flew to Connecticut in late September to speak with Miss Porter's officials about the alleged bullying and its effect on their daughter, according to the suit. Nina Bass met with Windsor twice, the suit says, and after the trip repeatedly contacted Windsor and the school throughout October when the harassment didn't stop.

The family's attorneys contend that when Bass used her notes to finish an art history test on Oct. 27, it was a first-time cheating offense that the teen attributed to the emotional stress of weeks of bullying. The suit asserts that Bass was so disturbed by her own actions that she sought out Windsor in tears to confess. School officials, the suit says, then violated a Miss Porter's policy by alerting Vanderbilt University that Bass, an early decision applicant, had received a three-day suspension after that incident.

After serving the suspension off-campus, the suit says, Bass returned to her classes, but slept at a local hotel with her parents. More on-campus harassment made the environment "emotionally traumatic" for Bass, who sought medical treatment for anxiety and missed about a week of classes.

On Nov. 11, the suit says, a week before learning that school officials planned to expel her from Miss Porter's, Bill and Nina Bass went with their daughter to get a few things from her dorm room.

Inside, they found Tatum's belongings tossed in a corner, according to the suit. On her bed someone had placed a "For Rent" sign.