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Leelanau Talk Blog

## The Leelanau School Caught Censoring Wikipedia!

November 16th, 2008 | Tags: leelanau, odell, richard, school, wikipedia
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Well, looks like the Leelanau School is at it again, silencing its critics. This time, they’ve been editing the school’s Wikipedia entry. How do we know it’s the Leelanau School? Well, because the IP address that made the changes (71.13.68.126) is the school webcam! Try going to http://71.13.68.126 and see what you get!

The editor, obviously working for the school, when confronted about the edits said “The Leelanau School’s Headmaster Rich Odell can answer any questions regarding changes made to this website, 231.334.5800″. He gave school president Richard Odell’s number out. Once this person’s edits were seen, a Wikipedia editor cleaned them up saying that “Wikipedia is not a marketing pamphlet”.

So what exactly did the school try and remove from the wikipedia entry? Well, quite a bit. Here’s all the things they didn’t like people knowing about the school.

1. The school has had a fluctuating enrollment between 60 and roughly 100 (the latter being its nominal capacity) over the last 20 years. During the last few years the school has suffered declining enrollment and resulting increasing encumbrance on its financial structure. Challenges facing the school include a lack of “legacy” students (students whose parent(s) also attended Leelanau) and a severe shortfall in charitable giving.

2. In response to these challenges the school has undertaken a realignment of its core competency, choosing to emphasize “learning differences”, and has boosted tuition levels to in excess of $40,000 annually. The success of this realignment in stabilizing the school’s fiscal status is yet to be determined

3. An organization called “The Leelanau Alumni Organization” was formed in late 2005 by alumni concerned over the lack of alumni contributions to the school and the potential of closure. This organization is independent from the school and intends to serve alumni interests, and hopes to facilitate the school’s growth as well

The school employee also removed links to sites that had negative reviews of The Leelanau School and the Leelanau Alumni Organization.

Now, I know what the school’s going to say about this. They’ll say that they were cleaning up factual inaccuracies in the entry. Fair enough, let’s check the facts. Number one and two can be confirmed by tax reports released by the Leelanau School and available in the download section. For number three, you don’t have to look any farther than the Leelanau Alumni Site.

The school’s Wikipedia editor also added quite a bit to the wikipedia entry, making the page sound more like a promotional video than an encyclopedia entry. He added too much to list here, but here’s just a sample of his “unbaised” view of Leelanau
The Leelanau School is the experience-based, five-senses learning community where students in grades 9 through 12 live and discover together on Lake Michigan’s wooded shore. We build on each student’s learning strengths, creatively using hands-on projects and our dramatic natural setting to help students gain a fresh new sense of independence, engagement, and capability.
Beyond textbooks. Through experience. Toward college. With a whole new sense of what’s possible.
The Leelanau Experience is engaging, unique, memorable, and life changing. The Leelanau Staff carefully assesses the strengths of each student and builds a program that pays attention to each individual’s educational, social, physical, and emotional development. In today’s society with all of the pressure for youth to succeed, the Leelanau Experience allows students to significantly improve their confidence and self-esteem.

Luckily, there are people on Wikipedia who want you to have the facts instead of a bunch of promotional hot air.

Unfortunately, the school didn’t stop at just vandalizing their own page. The author continued on, editing the page on Charles Darwin to say that Darwin “…hated with the passion of a thousand suns one and only one and that was Marie Curie because she stole her husbands ideas and won a bunch of prizes.”

Now, how do we know that these edits aren’t just done by students messing around online? Simple, because when you edit Wikipedia from school, that’s not the IP address that shows up. This is one of the external IP addresses from the school staff network. I’ve edited things on Wikipedia from school and they don’t show up under that IP and I know I’m not the only person who has edited things.

I have attached a zip file where I saved copies of all of the page edits, seeing as to how the Leelanau School might see it fit to go delete those off of Wikipedia as well. See the downloads section to the right –>

For honesty,
adb

### Possibly Related Posts

- January 8, 2009 -- New Headmaster of Leelanau: Matt Ralston
- April 22, 2009 -- Leelanau Golf Team, Phone Updates
- February 14, 2009 -- Quick News Update

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