A Criminal Act

There are mountains, and there are molehills. It is very easy to tell the two apart. But when molehills are built up into mountains, it’s fair to begin to question what all that earth-moving is about.

At Amagansett School, the alleged smoking gun is a gift card — most likely a gas gift card, and most likely for $50. In the broadest sense, it’s more pea shooter than pistol. And on that rickety foundation an ordeal has been built.

From the outside, there are two competing versions of events. One involves a principal, Maria Dorr, who risked an education career of more than 25 years, for roughly a single fill-up, depending on the size of the tank and the octane level. The other is a sketchy outline of a conspiracy designed to parlay petty disagreements in a school community into an attempt to smear an administrator with an allegation, and a process that stains like the ink from a copy machine, and is about as hard to wash off.

The administrative hearing, conducted as a quasi-trial, has occupied the one-school district for months. It culminated in a final twist straight out of Court TV: Maria Dorr herself, offering her own defense on November 20. She adamantly denied the accusation, which stems from an incident last holiday season at the school — and, like so many controversies these days, involves a video.

It comes down to a simple question: Whom do you believe? Timothy Taylor, the hearing officer, will have to answer that question to settle the dispute. But it’s clear that the proceedings have a broader audience, and the goal really was to destroy Dorr’s reputation. Frankly, no matter what Taylor rules in January, the damage has been done.

It’s very, very difficult to be in Taylor’s shoes. What began as a missing gift card, and an ambiguous video, has been massaged and kneaded and stretched into an Agatha Christie mystery, complete with attempts to interpret a routine few moments in a school office as that aforementioned smoking gun, showing malfeasance.

There is no jury, except public opinion, and maybe editorial comment from a newspaper that followed the whodunit from cliffhanger to sad cliffhanger. If we had a vote, it would be rooted in something Dorr said in her November testimony: “It’s a school. Things go missing all the time. Books are missing, hats are missing, gloves. It’s an elementary school.”

It’s an unsatisfying answer, but it feels like the right one. What’s the most likely scenario: an administrator pocketed a gift card clearly intended for someone else; the card was simply lost or misplaced; or there was simply a misunderstanding of some kind? The better question: What’s the least likely scenario of those three?

The proceedings seem to have demonstrated something beyond the matter at hand: There’s a clear poisonous atmosphere at Amagansett School, with cutthroat behavior appearing to be considered a reasonable response to what amounts to a frivolous matter. Along the way, witnesses talked about bad relations among the school board, administrators and teachers, and the union, harassing and bullying behavior, and obsessive retaliation. It seemed to be the one thing every witness agreed on. Every perspective seemed to see some side of that, and they all lined up.

And so it seems much more likely that the alleged deed, the made-for-TV red envelope, was more likely a red herring. A gift card went astray, and the ways that could have happened are varied. One could be that it went into a principal’s pocket, with nefarious intent.

The ensuing maelstrom, and the resulting tattered reputation, suggest that the stakes were too high to justify the risk. Was Maria Dorr that reckless, that greedy — that stupid? Or was the goal all along to simply have everyone asking those questions, publicly?

Timothy Taylor has the thankless task of settling that for the record. The court of public opinion will reach its own verdict. In this space? The conclusion: There is only one victim, and the gift card appears to be the weapon, not a smoking gun. A crime has occurred, but it wasn’t theft.