CONCORD, N.H. —A New Hampshire prep school that has educated some of the nation’s elite for more than a century and a half is confronting a campus practice of sexual conquest after a senior was charged with raping a 15-year-old freshman girl.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
WCVB
In a series of letters over the past year to students, parents and alumni, St. Paul’s School Rector Michael Hirschfeld candidly acknowledged the sexual assault charges and vowed to re-examine campus culture to see how a practice known as “Senior Salute” had been allowed to develop.
“While the allegation and the people it involves will not be a topic of conversation at the school, the broader issues it raises – the use of social media to perpetuate unhealthy relationships, the ‘hookup’ culture and unsanctioned student ‘traditions’ – will be,” Hirschfeld wrote on Aug. 7, 2014, a month after Owen Labrie was charged with rape and other felonies.
Labrie is on trial in Concord, home to the Episcopal prep school founded in 1856.
Set on a leafy, shaded campus on the hem of New Hampshire’s capital city, St. Paul’s looks more college than high school. Red brick buildings with soaring arches and columns dot rolling hills and athletic fields are emerald in mid-August heat. The school has seen future Nobel winners pass through its doors, along with Pulitzer Prize winners, senators, international business executives, bishops and diplomats.
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