According to Protopappas’s complaint, the student who had asked the question, Sarai Wilks, “unexpectedly burst out of anger and displayed an uncharacteristically emotional and intensely personal reaction to the discussion, focusing on how unfair the French law was to her friend from her former school on the West Coast who wore the hijab.”

Sarai is not just any student. She is the daughter of the head of school, Felicia Wilks, who began her tenure in July 2022. The next day, Sarai returned to class—the last day of her senior year—and “expressed even more anger, as if she had been inflamed,” according to the complaint. “She also tried but failed to get her peers involved and join in her outrage. She was very disappointed to be unsuccessful and to remain isolated in her anger. Her classmates were embarrassed and confused by what seemed completely out of the ordinary and blown out of proportion, especially since Sarai and her West Coast friend became the focus of the two final days of a productive year they had enjoyed.” (Free Press requests for comment from Sarai Wilks were not returned.)

It was all downhill from there.