EXETER — The president of the Phillips Exeter Academy Board of Trustees is promising action following more media reports about sexual assault on campus.

The response came after a letter signed by more than 1,000 alumni expressing outrage at the school’s response to numerous sexual assault allegations. The letter was made public last week and sent to PEA on Monday.

The academy’s administration “could not have been more asleep at the wheel” with the most recent case involving recent graduate Chukwudi Ikpeazu allegedly fondling a 17-year-old-girl on campus, according to the letter, spearheaded by 2012 Phillips Exeter graduate Evan Soltas.

The letter accuses the administration of being “more focused on concealing sexual assault than on addressing it, more interested in favorable press coverage than in the health of its students,” and threatens on behalf of all signers to withhold support, financial and otherwise, from the school until the issues are addressed. In addition to the recent case, it cites past incidents from the 1970s and 1980s involving faculty that became public knowledge this year.

Eunice Panetta, president of the Board of Trustees, issued a statement on Facebook, saying she, along with the rest of the board, is “disturbed, saddened and deeply concerned by recent events.”

Panetta said that she is unable to comment specifically on ongoing investigations, but that “it is our absolute commitment that we will take whatever actions are needed and learn every lesson we can.”

“We are profoundly grateful to those of you who are speaking up. We hear your criticisms, and we sincerely welcome your involvement, particularly that of our most recent graduates, who can shed the most light on what our current students may experience,” she said.

Panetta added that some of the stories she has received from academy alumni have brought her to tears. She did not, however, respond to the alumni’s threat to withhold financial support from the school.

As of Monday, the administration had not responded to requests for comment on the alumni letter, which accuses them of “breathtaking inadequacy” in their handling of sexual assault claims.

Soltas, along with signatories Sophie Haigney, Andrew Holzman, Tez Clark, Angelica Clayton, Amina Kunnummal and Zoha Qamar, also requested a meeting with the administration to discuss the issue, according to Clark.

The letter was prompted by news last week of the June arrest of academy senior Chukwudi Ikpeazu for an incident in October 2015, when he allegedly fondled a 17-year-old female student's breasts after she told him "no" and "we are not hooking up." He is charged with a Class A misdemeanor count of sexual assault and faces arraignment in August.

In an investigative report in the Boston Globe published last week, the victim claimed her reports of the incident were not addressed seriously by faculty and the academy minister, the Rev. Robert Thompson, urged reconciliation, asking Ikpeazu to bake and deliver bread to the victim weekly as “penance.”

The alleged victim told the Globe that, in addition to Thompson, she went to two school officials with her complaint and detailed how their response was to handle it in-house as well, sometimes classifying the incident with Ikpeazu as harassment rather than assault.

The alumni letter states Thompson’s actions were “an ad-hoc and bizarre method of punishment that serially re-traumatized that student,” calling the report “one of total systemic failure at the highest level.”

Alum Lawrence Jenkens, now of North Carolina, who accused former employee Arthur Peekel of abusing him on campus as a teenager in 1973, has also signed the letter.

In a May interview, Jenkens said that there appeared to be a “knee-jerk sort of instant response that is to downplay (cases of abuse), to pretend it didn’t happen,” on the part of the administration.

MacFarlane issued a letter to alumni and PEA families last week about the Globe story stating, "This incident and the manner in which it was handled, which left one of the students feeling that she was not well served, are both of grave concern to the leadership of the school. We do have extensive protocols in place for dealing with accusations of sexual misconduct, but questions have been raised about whether they were followed appropriately."

MacFarlane went on to write the case is being investigated by "legal authorities" and the school cannot yet comment further. She added, "Please know how deeply I share your distress and your grief. We are committed to taking whatever actions are needed to make Exeter a better school."

Ange Clayton, a 2013 graduate who signed the letter, said Sunday she has two particular things she would like to at least see acknowledged by the administration.

“I think we've identified two really big issues at hand here, and they're intertwined but distinct, and they need to be acknowledged … One, that sexual assault is taking place on that campus. Second, that there is a mishandling of that, once it comes to light. Not only has it taken place, but once it’s actually being brought forward, it’s not being handled well,” she said.

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