Gag letter said students not living on campus would be unable to attend the school in 2000-01
By: T.J. Furman
Parents of nonboarder students, or day students, at The Lawrenceville School need not worry. Their children can still attend the school.
A letter sent home to day student parents last week saying the day program was going to be discontinued at the start of the 2000-01 school year was apparently the work of senior pranksters at the school.
David Ruiter, Lawrenceville director of communications, said the discontinuation of the day program is “guaranteed not to happen. It’s not even possible that it would happen.”
An employee in Headmaster Michael Cary’s office said Mr. Cary has sent letters home to all day student parents clarifying the matter.
The prank letters most likely arrived at parents’ homes on Friday or Saturday, Mr. Ruiter said, because the school was flooded with calls Monday complaining about the false decision.
“The letterhead (the pranksters) used looked like the headmaster’s, but it was fake,” Mr. Ruiter said. “It gave every parent of a day student heart failure. They enhanced the letter by adding the names and phone numbers of people the parents should talk to about it.”
The letter also said a few boarding spots would be left open for the displaced day students and that a lottery would be held to determine who would fill those slots.
Mr. Ruiter said senior pranks are not an annual tradition at The Lawrenceville School, but that they are not uncommon either. When pranksters are caught they are usually punished, he said. The culprits in the day-student-letter prank have yet to be caught, according to Mr. Ruiter.
Mr. Ruiter said the school has accepted day students since it was founded as the Academy of Maidenhead in 1810.
At the beginning of the 1999-2000 school year, Lawrenceville had 542 students boarding on campus and 241 day students. Mr. Ruiter said most day students likely don’t commute farther than 12 miles.