From what I understood from some of the other students, it was a country club among "therapeutic residential programs".
The good was that the campus was beautiful, the food was tasty (and they let us work in the kitchen for cash), we had a little autonomy over dorm life, and we got frequent mall/movie trips assuming we didn't fall afoul of the points system.
The bad was... nearly everything else. Poorly maintained school buildings, frequent use of restraints, completely inappropriate room assignments, bullying (neuroatypical kids particularly) in full view of staff, apathetic teachers playing Farmville behind their desks, dorms effectively run by abusive cliques.
Some of the staff were overtly racist or homophobic, some were hard drug users. The "therapeutic" component was wildly inconsistent in quality and often resulted in some really fucked up situations for students. Police were called to campus on a weekly basis to deal with the aftermath of fights, and a lot of people kept shanks or other improvised weapons in their rooms. I knew several kids there who'd been on room restriction (outside of school and meal hours) for the majority of their time there for really petty shit. There were rumors of organized sexual abuse going on in the "worse" girls' dorm, but the people who perpetuated those rumors were pretty unreliable in general so idk. Many of the students were over 18 but still stuck there for one reason or another. Drug deals were extremely common.
The murder was pretty common knowledge on campus but it wasn't really talked about because a) what is there to talk about when you're 16 and stuck in that place? and b) the staff got really alarmed whenever it came up. Found an old yearbook that had both the perp and victim in it, was good for a few laughs. I was unsurprised to hear of the suicide, and very surprised that one hadn't happened during my time there - though there were a few serious attempts I heard of.
If anyone wants specifically personal anecdotes, pm.
A murder took place on the campus a decade ago. For reasons unknown they didn't screen two boys and put them together even their diagnoses should have spoken against it. Tragedy struck and one of the boys flew out the window. The other boy was put in prison properly too sick to realize what he did.
Years later in 2014 a girl was found dead. This time it was suicide or at least so it was ruled.
Sources:
- Summit Nyack "alumni" (The original testimony on Reddit)
- New York: Upper Nyack: Student Charged In Fatal Plunge (The New York Times)
- 15-year-old's death at Summit school ruled suicide (Lohud)
