Alumni to protest on Horace Mann campus

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While leaders from Horace Mann meet with the school’s Alumni Council Thursday, a second gathering of alumni will assemble on campus to protest the hilltop school’s response to allegations of sexual abuse. 

Robert Boynton, a 1981 alumnus, said he hopes the demonstration will prompt Horace Mann to start acting like an educational institution, rather than a corporation.

“We want them to acknowledge that this abuse took place because if you read the press, their statements, it’s always ‘people who say they were hurt’ or ‘allegedly.’ It’s all this lawyer-ed, PR language,” said Mr. Boynton, a professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University. “Apologize to the victims … Set up a truly independent investigatory body to look into exactly what happened.”

The school moved its meeting with the Alumni Council –– which organizes alumni fund raisers and social and educational events for graduates ––from a law firm office downtown to the Riverdale campus after learning about the coalition’s protest, according to Mr. Boynton, who said he felt the move illustrated that the coalition’s goals “were lost on them.” 

The Horace Mann Action Coalition behind the protest — which is made up of more than a dozen alumni seeking to form a non-profit — intends to remind the administration of its requests on the first day of school with a “diploma drop,” during which they will hand back their degrees with the authorizing signatures of school officials clipped off. 

Mr. Boynton said the coalition will call off the protests and other demonstrations in the works as soon as Horace Mann apologizes, acknowledges the abuse and organizes an independent investigation.

“In light of the Horace Mann Action Coalition’s possible protest at our upcoming Alumni Council meeting on Aug. 16 and out of respect for those venues that so graciously support the school with meeting space, the decision was made to move the meeting to campus,” Head of School Thomas Kelly said in a statement. 

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