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Andover High School is back in the news again for all the wrong reasons.

Lowell Sun: Things got heated between School Committee Chairman Keith Sullivan and Andover High School students at an Andover-Tewksbury basketball game Friday night in Andover. On Friday night, Sullivan was arrested by Andover Police on a trespassing charge. According to Andover Police Lt. Edward Guy, Sullivan and “an older gentleman” were sitting on the Andover High side among Andover students when things became heated. “It was a pretty raucous crowd, I guess,” said Guy.

At one point, some of the students took Sullivan’s and his companion’s jackets, which an Andover High administrator then retrieved, Guy said. Upon returning the jackets, the administrator suggested the two men move to sit with the Tewksbury crowd to avoid further dust-ups. At first, both men refused, but then Sullivan’s companion agreed to move. Sullivan stayed in his seat, according to Guy. As tensions rose, an officer suggested that Sullivan leave the game to avoid further issues. The officer asked Sullivan to leave three times, advising him the third time that he would be arrested if he stayed. Sullivan refused all requests to leave and was ultimately arrested, according to Guy. Sullivan is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Lawrence District Court.

Am I missing something here? A parent of the visiting team travels to Andover High School, has his property stolen by students, and instead of the kids being kicked out or disciplined, the adult is arrested for inciting simply because he was sitting in the general proximity of the opposing team’s fans?

Must be the hat.

There has to be more to this, although it’s coming from the police themselves. They didn’t mention this guy breaking any laws. He was the victim, and then he was arrested because he refused to move away from the people who victimized him.

Newsflash – he was under no obligation to move. He paid money to be there, he was a guest, he was treated poorly, and he’s a free citizen living in a free country. He can sit wherever he damn well pleases, regardless of whether or not it was a designated student section. Again, I don’t want to jump to any conclusions here, but if this is all there is to the story it’s the most asinine job by the Andover Police and high school administration.

I’ve never seen a school where the kids are more entitled and bratty than Andover, and it’s a direct result of administrators punishing the adults in their lives who did nothing wrong, simply to appease a temper tantrum. This is a school that suspended one of the best volleyball coaches in the state because some awful kid outright refused to come out of the game after screwing up, and then blamed the coach for de-captainizing him.

The same school where a failed country music singer made up a story that his son was denied food and water by Coach Chris Kuchar, leading to a fraudulent DCF investigation that completely exonerated him. Yet he was terminated anyway, despite making Andover one of the best programs in the state. Andover is now terrible, and Kuchar’s new team Malden Catholic is dominating the ice.

The same school where Superintendent Shelley Berman wrote an insane 6 page letter blasting Coach Kuchar for not giving enough ice time to his mediocre son Dale, while simultaneously claiming to be unbiased.

That letter gets crazier every time I read it. He didn’t think anyone would look into his expertise as a Big 10 Division 1 athlete, but we did. Turns out he was on the fencing team at Wisconsin and rode the bench for most of his career because he was so terrible.

The residents of Andover responded by re-electing all the people on the School Committee who covered for Berman, so I officially gave up on that town because clearly there is no hope.

The fact that AD Bill Martin, Principal Phil Conrad, and Superintendent Shelley Berman would allow their students to steal property from a guest of the opposing team, and then have the police arrest the victim, is pretty consistent with the values coming out of the town of Andover.

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