Sometimes it can be sad to be newsworthy. Sorry, Charlie!

Oh, but what about school head Thomas Kelly, the guy who fired Andrew Trees and Mr. Janice Minn? Turns out, he's a bit of a schmuck.

Tom Kelly was selected to run Horace Mann by the school's board, over the protest of the school's staff. He came from a public school background, and had done admirable work with mentally handicapped kids, but he also allowed a construction companies to dump their toxic garbage all over school grounds.

Here are the dumps in question. Kelly justified this by pointing out that the companies were nice enough to place brand-new athletic fields on top of the landfills. Critics counter that these fields will give the kids cancer and also they are illegal. The State of New York closed the fields and the taxpayers were stuck with the bill for cleaning them up.

Here's a fun factoid: the toxicity of the fields was revealed the same fall that Kelly started at Horace Mann. Then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is a Horace Mann alum. His wife Silda is on the board of trustees—and was on the search committee that picked Kelly.

Spitzer only sued one of the three towns that took the cancerous construction garbage through illegal no-bid contracts. It was Eastchester, not Kelly's town of Valhalla. Take from that what you will!

In 2006, the Valhalla field finally reopened, mostly safe for use. Mostly.

The soil was analyzed for PCBs, pesticides, metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and volatile organic compounds. Most chemicals for which testing was performed were not detected in the soil, according to the DEC. But of the chemicals that were detected, most fell below state safety guidelines.

Levels of PAHs above state guidelines were found only in sample TP-7, which was the soil taken from the steep slope on the western side of the athletic field, facing Columbus Avenue. In that sample, the DEC acknowledged that levels of PAHs exceeded state guidelines, but concluded that "routine exposure to soil on the slope is probably unlikely." The agency noted that the District should maintain the grass cover on the slope to further reduce the potential for exposure.

(During Kelly's Horace Mann tenure, the school got artificial turf for its athletic field, which is not located on top of a cancerous dump.)

The Alligator Sunglasses Lady

This mysterious lady is a Horace Mann trustee. Her daughter started the offensive Facebook group that caught the attention of history teacher Peter Sheehy. So, naturally, one day she marched up to Sheehy and teacher Danielle McGuire (the target of the Facebook group) and had an insane argument with McGuire about how the teacher invaded the daughter's privacy and read daughter's secret journal by browsing the public Facebook group the daughter started. Then alligator sunglasses woman accused the teacher of calling another kid a Nazi, which almost got the teacher fired, even though it didn't happen. So—let's meet Alligator Sunglasses Lady!

Her name is Wendy Siegel. She's on the right. Her husband is Stephen B. Siegel, chairman of Global Brokerage for CB Richard Ellis.

"Jeffrey Robbins"

This is the little boy who harrassed Danielle McGuire for being a liberal who tried to talk about minorities in class, which upset young Robbins very much. He accused McGuire of calling him a "Nazi" and even claimed to have a tape. Of course, he didn't. His personal hero is Horace Mann alum Roy Cohn, though one wonders if he knows about the closet queer thing. The spoiled little shit also ended up class president! According to a tipster, the charming young Upper East Sider has two doctor parents, got early acceptance to Columbia, and recently "cancelled a meeting of the women's issues group at HM because he didn't like them." Here he is in the Horace Mann yearbook!

Confidential to Columbia: this kid? Really?

Tom Kelly, Horace Mann's Head of School, said, according to the complaint, that Trees was terminated because of the book, not because of job performance—although he had previously told Trees that he "personally enjoyed" the book and that its publication would not interfere with his employment there.

In the filing, Trees claims that Horace Mann didn't obey its own due process policies involved in the firing of an employee.

The document says:

In an unfortunate example of life imitating art, Defendant Horace Mann embarked on a smear campaign against Plaintiff Trees as punishment for writing Academy X (before firing him), just as the fictional protagonist of Academy X was a teacher persecuted by a corrupt school administration because of his refusal to play along with the school's kowtowing to wealthy parents and their "by any means necessary" attitude toward college admissions for their progeny.

Dear Editor,

We were shocked and disappointed that the Horace Mann school would dismiss a faculty member for writing a novel, and we applaud the many Horace Mann students who courageously and thoughtfully protested this action and advocated for academic freedom. This shows Horace Mann students at their finest.

We believe that academic freedom should be the cornerstone of an educational institution. In our own work and in our classrooms, we strive to create an environment where students and faculty are free to think critically. We believe this is crucial not just for our schools but for our country. As the Horace Mann student petition stated, "democracy is a primary ethical value that [can] be promoted and protected best through an educational system that respects academic freedom." We agree that a free and democratic society demands actively engaged citizens who are willing to question the world around them.

Given Horace Mann's reputation, we believed that the school would consider academic freedom a principle to be celebrated, rather than an action to be punished. Restrictions on academic freedom invariably have chilling effects. We can only imagine the impact this will have on the entire community at Horace Mann and the various ways it will now hinder the school's efforts to provide a free and challenging intellectual environment.

Sincerely,

Edward Ayers

President of the University of Richmond (beginning July 2007); Buckner W. Clay Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History, University of Virginia; Recipient of the Bancroft Prize (2004), Albert J. Beveridge Award, and J. Willard Hurst Prize

Julian Bond

Professor, Department of History, University of Virginia; Chairman NAACP

Brian Balogh

Mayo Distinguished Teaching Professor of History; Co-Director American Political Development Program, University of Virginia

Eileen Boris

Professor and Hull Chair of Women's History and Affiliate Professor of History and Law and Society at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Recipient of the Philip Taft Prize (1994)

William Chafe

Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History; Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, Duke University;

Katherine Charron

Assistant Professor of History, North Carolina State University

Paul Clemens

Professor of History; Chair of History Department, Rutgers University

Andrew Cohen

Assistant Professor of History, Syracuse University

Stephen Cushman

Professor of English, University of Virginia

Victoria de Grazia (HM Parent 2002)

Professor of History, Columbia University

John Dittmer

Professor Emeritus of History, Depauw University; Recipient of the Bancroft Prize (1994), Lilliam Smith Book Award (1993), McLemore Prize (1995), and the Herbert Gutman Prize (1994)

Greg Dorr

Postdoctoral Associate, Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, Technology, and Medicine. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jed Esty

Associate Professor of English, University of Illinois

Jon Earle

Associate Professor of History, University of Kansas; Ray Allen Billington Chair in U.S. History at Occidental College and the Huntington Library, 2006-2007

Ann Fabian (Former HM Parent)

Professor of American Studies and History, Chair of American Studies, Dean of Humanities, School of Arts and Sciences Rutgers University.

Eric Foner

DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University; President of the Society of American Historians (2006-2007); President, American Historical Association, 2000; President, Organization of American Historians, (1993-94); recipient of Los Angeles Times Book Award for History; Bancroft Prize; Parkman Prize; Lionel Trilling Award; Owsley Prize. Finalist, National Book Award; Finalist, National Book Critics' Circle Award

Susan Fraiman

Professor of English, University of Virginia

Joanne Freeman

Professor of History, Yale University

Scot French

Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia; Director of Virginia Center for Digital History

Paul Gaston

Professor Emeritus of Southern and Civil Rights History, University of Virginia

Gary Gallagher

John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War, University of Virginia

Grace Hale

Associate Professor of History and American Studies, University of Virginia

Nancy Hewitt

Director, Institute for Research on Women; Professor of History, Rutgers University

Hugh Hochman

Associate Professor of French and Humanities, Reed College

Michael Holt

Williams Professor of History, University of Virginia

Woody Holton

Associate Professor of History, University of Richmond

Watson Jennison

Assistant Professor of History, University of North Carolina Greensboro

Stephen Kantrowitz

Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin

Temma Kaplan

Professor of History, Rutgers University

Peter Kastor

Assistant Professor of History; Assistant Professor of American Culture Studies, Washington University

Jennifer Klein

Associate Professor of History, Yale University; Recipient of the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians (2004); Recipient of the Hagley Prize (2004)

Juliette Landphair

Dean of Westhampton College, University of Richmond

Ann Lane

Professor of History and Women's Studies

Steven F. Lawson

Professor of History, Rutgers University

Susana Michele Lee

Assistant Professor, North Carolina State University

Adriane Lentz-Smith

Assistant Professor of History, Duke University

Marc Lerner (HM 1989)

Assistant Professor of History, University of Mississippi

Nicholas Lemann

Henry R. Luce Professor of Journalism, Columbia University

Andrew Lewis

Visiting Assistant Professor of History, Hamilton College

Matt Lassiter

Associate Professor of History, University of Michigan

Nelson Lichtenstein

Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara; Recipient of the Philip Taft Prize (2003)

Danielle McGuire

Faculty, Horace Mann School

Allan Megill

Professor of History, University of Virginia; President, Journal of the History of Ideas

Paul Milazzo

Assistant Professor of History, Ohio University

Jennifer Morgan

Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University

Andrew Morris

Assistant Professor of History, Union College

Amy Morsman

Assistant Professor of History, Middlebury College

Jenry Morsman

Adjunct Professor of History, Middlebury College

Stephen M. Norris

Assistant Professor of History and Director of Film Studies, Miami University

James Oakes

Professor of History and Humanities Chair, Graduate Center of the City University of New York

Peter Onuf

Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor, University of Virginia

Rosalind Rosenberg

Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University; Executive Board of the Society of American Historians

Joshua Rothman

Associate Professor of History, University of Alabama

Anne Rubin

Associate Professor of History, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Winner of the 2006 Avery O. Craven Award from the Organization of American Historians

Reuel Schiller

Professor of Law, Hastings College of the Law, University of California

Peter Sheehy

Faculty, Horace Mann School

Herbert Sloan

Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History, Barnard College, Columbia University

Michael Socolow

Assistant Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine

Doug Smith

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow, 2006-2007; Assistant Professor of History, Occidental College

Emily Straus (HM 1991)

Assistant Professor of History, SUNY Fredonia

Alan Taylor

Professor of History, University of California at Davis; Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, Bancroft Prize, and Albert J. Beveridge Award (1996)

Scott Taylor

Assistant Professor of History, Siena College

Timothy Tyson (Book Day speaker and civil rights lecture at HM, 2005, 2006)

Senior Scholar, the Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University; Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture, Duke Divinity School; Adjunct Professor of American Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Philip Troutman

Assistant Professor of Writing, The George Washington University

Craig Werner (Keynote speaker for Book Day at HM, 2006)

Professor of Afro-American Studies, Chair of Integrated Liberal Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Was the book that Michiko Kakutani savaged for being unrealistic perhaps still a bit too realistic for some students or, as the headmaster in the novel calls them, "customers"? Here's how Michiko characterized the book's depiction of the place.

The school's cafeteria is a food court that includes sushi and a pizza oven; the school's deans cheerfully accept a host of excuses for plagiarism and cheating. "Leniency," John observes, "was in keeping with the philosophy of the school — let no revenue stream be interrupted." In the early pages of this novel Mr. Trees demonstrates inklings of a Kingsley Amis-like ability to extract humor from the travails of his hapless hero, but any hopes that the book might become a "Lucky Jim"-ish romp are soon squashed by his preposterous plot and John's tedious class rage at Caitlyn's parents and their ilk.

In his letter, Dr. Sheehy deplored "the termination of someone who has been described by his peers and the administration as a great teacher" and warned of the "chilling effect" that Dr. Trees' firing would have on "the open and free exchange of ideas that is crucial to a secure and healthy institution." Yes. Also, if Dr. Trees isn't reinstated, where will he glean material for a sequel?