After a couple of Slog posts, the controversy at Seattle's private Bush School made it into this week's paper.

A synopsis: the story involves a group of students who call themselves the "real rich boys crew," a racist joke-letter that popped out of their social circle and caused a campus ruckus, the administration's decision to not punish anyone for the letter, accusations that children of parents who write big donation checks are less likely to be punished for bad behavior than the children of less-wealthy parents, a former math teacher named Truman Buffett who first made these accusations public in an online video, the fact that donations and grants recently fell from $4 million to $2 million in a single year, and lots of other stuff.

The feedback has been... impassioned. Lots of anonymous comments, emails, and phone calls, many clearly from students, and many unhappy with Truman Buffett and me (and a few of them supportive). Here are a few samples, with background music...

Stop crawling all over our school and our lives, in case you haven't realized, THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU PEOPLE,
WHO ARE YOU??? seriously? i understand that you CAN talk about whatever you want to but you have to understand that you are damaging these children's education, creating issues that many of them HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH. Freshmen never even met RRBC and certainly hadn't heard of the incident before this.
By blowing this issue up and arguing semantics, you are destroying what the school was made for
I WANT TO FIX THESE ISSUES but believe me when i say that this will be dealt with inside the Bush School WITHOUT YOUR required or desired knowledge.
BUZZ OFF AND GO BACK TO YOUR OWN LIVES

A white guy imitating black English - so what.

If that makes him a racist, so is David Foster Wallace, Gene Wilder, Robert Downey Jr. and every white person who has said "no you di'n't" or "biaaatch".

For one, the fact that you're taking Brandon Kiley and The Stranger's word for this information, over that of students, graduates, and faculty members is absurd. The Stranger is a terrible publication that perpetuates gossip and only tells one side of its stories; it is absolutely not to be trusted

Something tells me Brandon thinks '16 Candles' is a documentary.

It is great that you posted that video, and incited the stream of objections and justifications that you did. The issue at Bush is not isolated by any means, but indicative of a larger problem, beyond what one might expect from an "elite white private school." The real problem is, as several commenters mentioned, the growing discontent among the faculty, students, and parents regarding the administration. For several years now this has been building, but most people within the community are afraid to talk about it for fear of losing their jobs or their admission into college.

Here's a note from a guy who said he was part of the real rich boys crew:

In reality, there was no membership, and it was no more a group than any other group of friends. As popular students at the school, this was the name that caught on amongst the student body. Some of the individuals in the group are certainly wealthy, but all of us had different economic backgrounds. Money was not something we prided ourselves on or flaunted, and it was not the reason for our friendship. We received punishments as much as any other students or group of students. One particular example I remember was when a deans meeting was called for us at the beginning of the year. We had left early and gotten lunch before the opening potluck. For such an innocent act there was a full investigation and we received restrictions on our off campus privileges. None of my friends nor myself ever felt that we were somehow exempt from the rules. Without getting into details, there have certainly been mistakes we've made as individuals that we've been fairly punished for. There is no "laundry list" of offenses that have been conveniently ignored - at least not anything we know we have been accused of.

This one is my favorite—a few choice sentences I've edited down from one young lady's heartfelt phone message (that was cut off for being too long):

I am a senior at Bush. This is terrible journalism. The letter did not have ill intentions, it was written by someone whose friend got declined from Harvard and it was meant to target his spirits back up. Yes, it was racist, yes it was sexist, and yes much of the language was inappropriate, but it was not meant in a hurtful way. There was no point in suspending anyone because it did not have ill intentions. I don't condone what he did and the community doesn't care what he did. Anywhere you go there will be racism but stop bagging on the Bush School.

I'm really and truly disappointed by what you're doing with this. All it's done is brought up a giant wound for all of us. It sickens me, it sickens most people, and you really should be ashamed of yourself—you shed light on something that, yeah, is an important thing but you shed terrible light on it. I hope you have fun clearing this up because you have a lot to apologize for and a lot to learn. You should visit the Bush School, you should come one day because if you think it's just a bunch of white—

This is a matter that can and should be handled within the school community. Let's not blow it out of proportion, as Truman and Brendan Kiley have. In fact, posting the letter shows it was just a poor attempt at humor. It was absolutely offensive, yes, but is it really anything different than what you would see on the Chappelle show? Come on people.

For those who have not attended Bush, have not been to Bush for any reason, perhaps it would be better for those people to leave this conversation. It’s easy to come to a conclusion on a complex subject when a person simply does not understand.

That said, if you insist on being a part of the conversation, please do you best to refrain from insulting an entire student body. You don’t know us. Do not insinuate that we are racist because one or two students supposedly didn’t care about the letter.

He [Truman Buffett] was a very good math teacher but always seemed to be involved in really controversial incidents. It seems to have become a theme or part of the story and you need to know that your statements made it look like you really hadn't done your homework, so to speak. Other than that, good job over all and I think many people in the community are happy that all this is being looked into, especially faculty and staff.

I think that it isn't up to a teacher though, to punish a student. As a senior in high school, you are less than one year away from being in college. If you haven't learned the difference between wrong and right by that point, then it isn't the school's responsibility to teach you.