Oh that poor kid! Muffy is beyond appalling. I am so glad Lulu has so many people supporting her.
From here on out, hen it comes to Muffy, document every interaction, save every email and keep your eyes peeled. I will bet my favorite pair of stilettos that the Dean is building a case to fire her. This would not be "tattling" or "stirring the pot", this would be proetcting kids from Muffy.
I agree! And I found this sentence in the OP's update to be very encouraging:
Interestingly enough, the dean already knew about the conversation in the music hall because another teacher overheard it and told the dean about it.
Obviously the atmosphere at this school is such that the dean is open to hearing these things and will take action, if another random teacher overheard and took the problem to the dean. (Why that teacher didn't directly intervene at the time is another question, but, again, hindsight is 20/20.)
I'm wondering if there might even be more to this story, not in the sense that Lulu did anything wrong, but that maybe she has a better working rel
ationship with Babs than Muffy would like. (It sounds like Lulu plays a violin-don't the violinists have a closer rel
ationship with the conductor than those who play other instruments, especially the first chair? I don't know much about orchestras, especially not at this level.)
Maybe Muffy expected that the students would get up in arms about the departure of Perry, and when the expected protest was not forthcoming, she decided to take it out on someone and Lulu just happened to look good. Maybe she even overheard Lulu saying something nice about Babs and somehow is taking it personally. Who knows? Muffy seems to just have some serious problems and poor Lulu is just caught in her wrath for no fault of Lulu's and no way she can fix it without help-which it sounds like she has, from the OP and other adults at the school.
I also feel sorry for Babs-she's going to lose good orchestra members if this keeps up. And it's going to be more difficult for her to pull students out of class for a few moments for fully legitimate reasons, if Muffy loses the credibility needed to do it on her behalf (which it sounds like she might, regarding all students, not just Lulu) and teachers just refuse to allow it at all.
I'm glad the dean and the other teachers are on top of it and I hope the story of Muffy eventually has cause to find its way to the professional darwinism thread!