A week after the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Fla., officials at Cretin-Derham Hall investigated rumors of a planned attack on the private St. Paul high school.
School leaders told reporters the next day that the concerns were based on “inaccurate information.”
Yet, a senior student was expelled from the school and denied the opportunity to contest the decision, his attorney says.
“The allegations were false: rumor, gossip and innuendo,” Phil Villaume said. “The school knew they were false and expelled him anyway.”
Villaume and the student, David Deaver, are suing the school in Ramsey County District Court. They’re alleging the school breached its tuition contract, denied Deaver due process and defamed him through public statements.
Although Deaver was awarded a diploma, Villaume said, his Feb. 21 expulsion denied him the chance to attend graduation ceremonies, the military ball and prom, and separated him from friends and school activities like band, JROTC, trap and skeet and a senior trip to Florida.
Five weeks later, school officials met with Deaver and his parents but Villaume said it was clear they were not willing to change their minds. Villaume said he wanted a hearing with a neutral investigator but the school refused.
Minnesota law guarantees a hearing to public school students who are expelled, but private schools aren’t subject to that law.
According to a Pioneer Press report, parents had called school administrators at 10 p.m. Feb. 21 about what Cretin-Derham Hall spokeswoman Annie Broos termed “a perception that there might be a student who was threatening to have a gun, to do harm to other students.”
Police were notified but no arrests were made. Classes were held as normal the next day but with police on site.
School president Frank Miley told the newspaper that students were “on heightened alert about school safety” and that “sometimes inaccurate information gets out on social media and gets a life of its own.”
Villaume said Deaver never was told specifically what he was alleged to have said or done.
“I think it was just rumors that got out of control and they panicked, overreacted,” Villaume said.
Broos declined to comment for this story.