UPDATE: Ladue to Fully Cooperate With Civil Rights Investigation
The district is not authorized to confirm or deny the receipt of the complaint.
In response to the news that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights will launch an investigation into Ladue Horton Watkins High School’s “Senior List,” the Ladue School District released the following statement:
“In accordance with procedures established by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), an organization against which an OCR complaint or investigation has been filed is not authorized to confirm or deny receipt of a complaint, nor comment on the investigation in any way. That being said, were the Ladue School District to become a subject of an OCR complaint, the district would cooperate fully with the investigation and fulfill any requests made of the district by the OCR. As always, the physical and emotional safety of our students is our primary objective and the district’s administration is appreciative of any person or entity sharing that concern.”
The investigation was launched after Ladue High parent Ruth Ahlemeier complained to the Ladue School District about the Senior List, which is circulated near graduation time by students for at least 10 years. In the list, names a handful of girls each year and describes them with crude, vulgar and sometimes obscene references to students' body parts, sexual habits and hygiene.
Read previous story:
Civil Rights Office to Investigate 'Senior List' Complaint Against Ladue School District
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Scott Simon
1:29 pm on Friday, November 2, 2012
This is not a story. The obvious is not a story. Press releases are not stories. Agreeing to an investigation is not a story. If they had said, "We're not cooperating," then we'd have a story. Tell people something new and out of the ordinary.
Gregg Palermo
1:38 pm on Friday, November 2, 2012
We felt it important to get it on the record for our readers since we did not have this information earlier in the week when we first reported that the agency involved agreed to investigate.