And, finally, it’s time to hand out the awards to the “Girls of the Week”: Alana, who sacrificed so much time to help her classmates in chemistry; Sam, for doing such a great job organizing senior kitchen; and Lillian, for having such a positive attitude and cheering so much in gym. The honored girls approach the stage to take their certificates. The rafters are thundering. Meeting concludes with a small a cappella group singing “Here Comes the Sun.” You’d have to be Scrooge not to smile a little. Or paranoid about cults.

But last fall at least one student, a senior named Tatum Bass, wasn’t feeling the love. Miss Porter’s made her so unhappy, in fact, that her parents hit the school with a lawsuit, alleging that a group of girls had verbally abused Tatum for weeks. The family claims that despite its efforts to stop the abuse Kate Windsor, who’d been installed as the new headmistress just weeks before, did nothing to intercede. Eventually, Tatum claims, the harassment caused her so much emotional distress that she ended up cheating on a test and missing some school, which resulted in her getting suspended and then expelled—something the family says was unfair in light of the circumstances. The school informed her college of choice, Vanderbilt, of the cheating and suspension, without, the family says, giving her the proper opportunity to defend herself—and Tatum was rejected.

Ordinary “mean girl” accusations maybe, but Miss Porter’s is no ordinary school. It’s where Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis went, in addition to many other famous debutantes and beauties, such as Gloria Vanderbilt, Lilly Pulitzer, Brenda Frazier, Barbara Hutton, Edith Beale (the “Little Edie” of Grey Gardens), and actress Gene Tierney, as well as numerous young ladies with the last names Rockefeller, Auchincloss, Bouvier, Biddle, Bush, Havemeyer, Forbes, and Van Rensselaer, not to mention heiresses to the fortunes generated by a supermarket-aisleful of iconic American products, including one brand of breakfast cereal (Kellogg’s), three meats (the Raths of Iowa and the Swifts and Armours of Chicago), and the world’s most famous dough (Pillsbury). (Full disclosure: my mother, Anne Peretz, was class of ’56.) Now, all of a sudden, these Bass people—not the Basses of Texas—seemed to be turning Miss Porter’s good name into something out of a Lindsay Lohan movie. The shell-shocked school discouraged students from discussing the matter with the press and announced that it was determined to fight the suit “vigorously.” Students and loyal alums, who call themselves “Ancients,” were beside themselves—not because they doubted Bass was hurt by her classmates but because she had the audacity to whine about it, and to use it as an excuse for cheating.

“I was outraged,” says Lauren Goldfarb (’98). “Look, she cheated. She lied. And guess what? It’s a top academic environment.”

A source closely involved in the school, who does not know the Basses, explains, “If a kid has any disciplinary action and has applied early-decision to college, the colleges have to be notified. As soon as that happened, Mommy back in South Carolina said, ‘Wait a minute—my darling isn’t going to get into Vanderbilt!’”

Nina Auchincloss Straight, Jackie Kennedy’s stepsister, whose family has produced several Miss Porter’s girls, can only laugh at the girl’s sensitivity. “In this day and age, someone claiming that would have to be a lobotomy [case].” (The Basses decline to comment.)

Bass cheated, which was bad enough, but in the eyes of the school community she was guilty of something worse: weakness. From its very start, in 1843, Miss Porter’s has been committed not just to the old-fashioned values of charm, grace, and loyalty but to another, unspoken value as well: the ability to tough it out. Deeply ingrained in the school’s DNA, it makes the school a kind of upper-class, social Outward Bound. Throughout its history, Miss Porter’s has tested girls’ personal fortitude in a variety of ways: through academic rigor, strict rules, and rituals designed to produce anxiety and intimidate. Whatever their problems, Miss Porter’s girls were expected to buck up, not to go crying home to Daddy. Think Jackie—charming, poised, cultured, and able to smile through her husband’s many infidelities. Much has changed. Farmington—anyone over 50 who went there calls it Farmington; today’s girls say simply “Porter’s”—has gone from a sheltered, almost entirely Wasp institution to one that’s impressively diverse. But this connection to its past, this remarkable stoicism, is what makes Miss Porter’s Miss Porter’s in the eyes of students and alumnae, and they wear it as a badge of honor.