The Case For and Against Dan Meier

The word community gets thrown around so much that it begins to lose its meaning. In this case, I’m referring to the construct of a geographic and cultural area composed of a variety of inhabitants. In our popular media, it is portrayed as a wonderful, inspiring reality — an ideal of loyalty to your fellow man and a support system that launches fortunate sons and daughters into prosperity.

But those of us who have chosen to look at life with a critical eye know that community can be a burden as well.

This blog post is one of those that relates to one of my local communities. I make very few of them, but when I do, they usually have to do with Virginia Tech, which has become the community I identify with the most.

But as much as I’m focused on redefining myself from who I was in high school and as much as I’d sometimes like to bury my teenage years in the suburbs of Northern Virginia behind me, the past couple of days have demonstrated that sometimes your communities have a pull on you. It’s a tie that for some is difficult to break. If you talk big talk about social responsibilities, moral imperatives and a duty to truth and justice, you can’t, in good conscience, simply shrug off the events that rock the communities of your past.

This is a blog post about my old high school principal, Daniel Meier, the trap he seems to have fallen into and the unfortunate tendency for civilized people to tear each other apart in the pressure-cooker of suburbia. It’s also a post about how digging deeper put things in perspective for yours truly.

Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together so far, with help from a contact or two:

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Subject: Daniel Meier

Principal of James W. Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax, Virginia
Fairfax is one of the richest counties in the country and Robinson is one of the largest International Baccalaureate schools in the world, with a total of almost 5,000 students.
Meier was recently sued for fraud in a case that involved the re-sale of unimproved property at inflated prices through the Total Realty Management Company, run by Meier’s former student at Chantilly High School, Mark Dain.
Meier was considered a “TRM spokesperson” who referred the plaintiffs to the company and allegedly received referral fees and speakers fees numbering in the thousands of dollars. Meier had also reportedly purchased two properties from TRM.
Meier filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy by the time of an August 28 Alexandria Court decision. TRM went into involuntary bankruptcy.
That court dismissed all charges against the Defendants, citing insufficient information to state a claim.
On October 18, 2009, the Washington Examiner, a right-wing tabloid-news publication broke the story with the headline “Teachers, principals caught in fraud case.” It named Meier specifically, mentioning briefly that the the plaintiffs were no longer pursuing claims against him.
Links:
Washington Examiner: Teachers, principals caught in fraud scandal
Alexandria Court Decision Dismissing Charges Against Meier and Defendants
Fairfax Times: Fairfax principals linked to North Carolina land scam

At this point, Meier is still principal of Robinson and is no longer a defendant in claims related to TRM fraud. The Fairfax Times reports that another case against the banks that decided to lend the money will come up in November.

Update: That Fairfax Times article contains better reporting than the Examiner, so I would suggest linking to that one in discussions from this point forward.
—–

Dan Meier and I go way back.

I mean, far back for a college student and a high school principal.

I think it was my freshman year in high school that Principal Ann Monday left Robinson Secondary which housed the 7th through 12th grades. It looks like she’s Superintendent of City Schools today, Jack Dale’s equivalent for the incorporated City of Fairfax. After a few months of having an awkward interim principal, her replacement was the big, smilin’, plain’-speakin’ Chantilly boy, Daniel Meier.

I was wary of him from day one.

In tenth grade, I was a staff writer gunning for the position of editor-in-chief of Robinson’s school newspaper, the Valor Dictus. With the arrival of this new authority figure, talking a lot of talk about keep kids “safe” and making sure they were “supervised,” I saw my chance to to play to media’s role of gatekeeper and be a thorn in his side.

I couldn’t really pin him on much.

I got my chance junior year as editorials editor for the VD. Meier had instituted a new lunch policy that, as I saw it, had the student body in an uproar. As I recall, rather than having luxuriously lengthy 45-minute long lunches we had been used to, Meier had decided to split the lunch shifts into three 30-minute periods. As a result, less students were at lunch at a time, which meant they could keep us all in the cafeteria. No more sneaking off to eat and liter outside or in the hallways.

We were indignant. We were furious. We were incensed.

We got used to it.

But I never let him off the hook for it. For at least three articles, usually editorials, I managed to arrange appointments with Dan Meier to grill him with tough questions that would expose him for the iron-fisted totalitarian I knew him to be. Questions like, “Why did the lunch policy change? What have students said about it? How does this make us safer?”

Yeah, I had him trembling in his boots.

Look at me. A regular Woodward AND Bernstein!

Meier was nothing if not a gifted politician. He managed to explain everything with simple logic even the most rebellious teenager could partially sympathize with. Not only that, but he was incredibly disarming. All smiles when he greeted you. A firm handshake. Memorized my name to call out in the hallways. And he gave me chocolate after each interview.

I always felt a few twinges of guilt as I bit into his blood candy.

Eventually as editor-in-chief, I had other problems besides toppling the administration. My last concrete memory of Dan Meier was shaking his hand at graduation, a moment etched into my mind because of the framed picture my parents keep in the living room. It’s possible we talked on one of the occasional visits I made to the school, maybe to get my IB diploma, but I managed to forget about him as the realities of college began to take priority.

Enter Total Realty Management, Mark Dain, and the Washington Examiner.

The Opinions section: It's what tells you that they're not part of the socialist liberal media machine.

One of my Robinson alumni Facebook friends linked the story. All I had to do was read the headline for the nostalgia gears to start turning. After giving up on ever finding anything interesting about the school principal that would have shaken up Robinson to its very core, here was some plump and meaty gossip that would have had high-school Phil crowing in delight.

So I let high-school Phil out for a while.

My initial comments in reaction to the headline and lead were…a bit asinine. To quote, my first online words were, “LOL! LOL! LOL!”

When I actually read past the lead, I started seeing how this was not as laugh-out-loud-able as I had thought. Particularly when it came to the bankruptcy news. Even from my biased perspective, I could sort of see how this went down.

Meier was an approachable person. And apparently had a great relationship with some students and the football players he coached at Chantilly High. One of these players was apparently Mark Dain. And Mark Dain had a deal for Coach Meier.

When I was in freshman year of college, my friend Robby Bob and I attended a seminar for something called Quixtar. They promised to make us a lot of money for minimal effort provided we just did a little bit of networking and signed up some people for a website. To this day, I still don’t know exactly how the venture claimed to generate money. Something about shopping online. But even at 18, with a strong desire to buy nice stuff for my first college girlfriend, I was able to see through Quixtar for what it was: a pyramid scheme. Robby Bob and I had to decline our mutual friend, who was trying to refer us.

See that first floor? You fill that first floor with more entrepreneurs, you make MORE money!

Okay, but what does this have to do with Dan Meier?

I’m just saying, the guy who pitched us the scam at the seminar was a high-energy, aimable, almost-convincing dude.

It was something Mr. Meier would have had a lot of fun doing.

But what he had to do first was purchase some property. And apparently he did. In the bankruptcy claim, Meier’s mortgage was said to include a lot for a mobile home. He owed Wells Fargo over $1 million.

Now, we can’t say whether or not he realized that he was being given a raw deal on whatever property he was mortgaging through Wells Fargo, acquired by TRM. But if he did find himself in a hole, it seems that Mr. Meier saw a limited number of options. One of those options could definitely have been working with Dain and gain a supplementary income (after all, his sons were going to college). And perhaps, as long as I’m speculating, in an effort to not completely accept that his recent realty investment was worthless, he convinced himself that TRM was in the business of giving good deals and making people money.

So, you see, I could imagine how Dan Meier was a victim. But I still reveled a little in the idea of my high school nemesis getting in trouble, minus the whole bankruptcy and total defamation of character thing, you know?

And then, in the midst of the Robinson alumni community being alternately shocked and amused at the debacle, a friend linked me to the August 28 opinion of the court that dismissed charges against Meier. And I remembered the initial friend who posted the story. She was adamantly emphasizing now that the Examiner was unreliable and known for slander.

The journalist in me was getting kind of antsy.

So I found a contact and started to look deeper, in an effort to be a good journalist and get to the heart of the matter. That’s where I got some documents linking Dan to several TRM sales as well as the bankruptcy claim. It was accusations all the way down. Nothing to really deny that my old principal was involved in this mess, but, as I pointed out, evidence that some of his recent dealings had landed him in financial trouble.

And then I simply Googled. And I found this.

….

“My kids are former Rams. They were in Robinson when Meier was using former students to defraud subordinates…with the help of his brother, another principal. Meier bought a $$$expensive house in Clifton a few years ago and I remember thinking that was odd.

Meier….GET OUT OF TOWN!!!”

“he messed up, he broke the law, and he will pay the price. but i still respect him, and he will always be the man who came to my help when i needed it most, and I didnt even need to ask twice. i believe he is a good man and i still respect him even through all of this. i know he will face the consequences no matter what they are. I pray for him and his family”

“The reality is that Robinson has steadily gone down hill since Ann Monday left the school in Meier’s hands. Dan Meier has consistently favored groups of students who severely and repeatedly violated SR&R around cheating, alcohol and drug use, especially athletes. His lack of action on an IB cheating incident in 2005 clearly demonstrated to students that he was not interested in doing the right thing – it helps when you are heading to Columbia….

Nothing made me happier in June than to have my last child out of FCPS and Robinson…karma is a bitch Dan…hope that your wife and kids find time to visit you in prison.”

“here’s something that the article didnt post. Dan Meier had made money buying lots from TRM previously, and currently owned 2 lots at the time of the so called fraud. He lost just as much money in the situation as the teachers accusing him of fraud. The fact of the matter is that this is a case of bad timing, the housing market crash and recession came simultaneously with these people buying their NC lots. While the situation is unfortunate, Dan and Tommy Meier should not be the scapegoat for these people losing money.”

“Meier should have the same ‘rights” as students. When he makes up his mind that they are wrong they are removed from class 3-5 days or more. Here is a man that needs to step aside, call it in school detention or whatever, he is judge & jury at the school, fair is fair. If he was the one who was the victim he would be sreaming the loudest. Dan Meier you are and always have been a lowlife, you (hopefully) will get all that is coming to you. I hope the BK is just the start. I hope your wife and kids will not be able to afford to come see you in prison”

…And I started to feel sort of sick.

Never mind the fact that this article, appearing out of nowhere two months after charges against Meier were dismissed and not pursued, clearly states that there is no interest in investigating him as a criminal. People are hoping that he gets jailed and cut off from his family? People are using their opinions on how he ran the school to justify wanting to see him financially ruined and imprisoned?

I started to remember my own initial comments and felt a pit in my stomach.

This is a messed-up world.

I was there for the 2005 cheating scandal. Luckily, my friends and I weren’t participants and I wasn’t affected directly. Some of my friends had to retake a tough exam, because the teachers weren’t sure how deep the cheating ring went. I was pretty peeved at how the school handled the disciplinary measures. And I know exactly who they’re talking about when that poster references the individual that his kid obviously hated more than I did. It certainly didn’t reflect well on Meier’s leadership. But, you know, it doesn’t reflect well on any of the administrators involved in the decision to slap these kids on the wrists.

And this is Fairfax County after all. How do you think one of these frothing parents would react if their kid was stripped of his advanced studies diploma, his chances to get into any respectable college, to be everything you promised him he could be? One word: Lawsuit.

The administration knew how the game was played. And what did it ultimately result in? Was it, at the end of the day, skin off my back? I chose not to apply to Columbia. I decided I wasn’t at that level (I sold myself short). No one took my spot in college. In fact, most of my class seemed content with where they were going. It’s the old cliche. The people the cheaters cheated most were themselves.

But, all this aside: What does this have to do with deciding a man deserves to have absolutely everything taken away? What justifies insulting a man’s family in a public forum and snapping at the first piece of news that paints him in a bad light?

I could ask myself many of these difficult questions. But I never fathomed bashing his wife and children on the Internet for every Googler to read. That’s the kind of vindictiveness that only the frustrations of putting a child through school in a suburb like Fairfax can elicit.

And then, finally, someone couldn’t stand it…

I’ve been reading the posts on this site for the past 24 hours, and up until this point I’ve been restraining myself from commenting. My name is Mike Meier, I’m Dan Meier’s oldest son, a Robinson Alum (2007), and currently a Yearling at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

At that point, I wonder how you would feel reading that if you had just expressed a wish that Mike Meier would never see his father again.

3 or 4 years ago my dad made an investment through a former student/ football player of his who had made a large amount of money buying and selling real estate, particularly in the North Carolina Coastal area. ….At first he was very skeptical to invest his money through TRM, but his former student assured him that he would eventually make money and would not regret his investment. Several months after buying his first lot, my dad sold it, making a nice amount of money….There was absolutely no illegal activity in this process, they were simply purchasing beachfront lots that were due to be developed within a few years, and selling the lots several months later, after the prices for the lots had raised. Simple real estate.

When asked about his experience, my dad gave true testimonials to others (often his friends and co-workers) about the success he had with TRM. Though he recommended others looking into this opportunity, he simply only referred other to TRM, and never handled any business personally. My dad would simply give the interested investors a point of contact for TRM if they were interested, and that was that. After receiving a large amount of business from people that my dad had referred to TRM, his former student began to write my dad several checks for customers he had referred…..Many of the people whom he referred to TRM were able to sell their lots and make decent amount of money. My dad was asked to give his personal testimonial on behalf of TRM at several business seminars, of which he was paid for. Again, nothing illegal. What I have explained up until this point is the extent of my dad’s interaction with TRM, and his involvement with this so-called “fraud”.

….What happened next in this situation, unfortunately was simply a case of bad timing. Many of these referred customers had bought lots from TRM, and were currently paying mortgage on them, waiting for their value to increase so that they could sell these lots. WHAT THE ARTICLE DID NOT MENTION was that along with these customers (predominately teachers and FCPS employees who heard about TRM through my dad or my uncle) was that my dad had bought 2 more lots from TRM and was paying mortgage on these lots, just like everyone else was. SO IF DAN MEIER KNEW HE WAS TRAPPING THESE TEACHERS INTO FRAUD, would it make sense for him to continue investing in TRM’s lots?

…Simultaneously with the purchasing of these new lots, last year’s housing market and economy collapse put a virtual freeze on buying across the nation. Though the value of these lots plummeted, along with every other asset in the real estate business, consumers were no longer willing to buy these properties, because nobody could afford it. ….AGAIN, I emphasize that my dad was stuck paying for these lots just like the rest of the people who eventually filed the lawsuit….

….THE LAWSUIT AGAINST MY DAD was thrown out by the judge in its preliminary hearing last month. The plaintiffs had no evidence of any wrongdoing or illegal activity by my father, and the judge stated that there simply was no case. Mrs. Pisner, the plaintiffs’ attorney contacted the Washington Examiner regarding the so called “fraud” that my dad and uncle were accused of being involved in. Though I’m not exactly sure what here motive was, I’m assuming it was to provide at least some sort of emotional compensation for her clients who had lost the case….I wonder how she will be able to go home and tell her son, a Robinson student, that she has professionally screwed Robinson’s beloved Mr. Meier (and all you RHS alum will admit, he is the man!). But unlike some of the posts above mine on this site, I am not going to make personal attacks at someone’s parent because I have been reading spiteful comments toward my father all day and trust me, it hurts….

So there you have it. Quotes from both sides. The perspective of a resentful parent-student body and of a son who obviously thinks much more highly of his dad.

I think a lot of us sort of wince when we read how adamant Mike is in claiming that nothing remotely illegal was going on. The courts might have determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to make a claim, but can we really bring ourselves to assume that Mark Dain’s company was completely on the level? Even on an ethical basis?

And let’s also be frank: Few people are completely and innocently hoodwinked into these kind of schemes. You buy into it expecting to get a good return. Apparently Mr. Meier did. But even if you don’t think it’s a bad idea for others, how many times do we have to be told that getting too greedy will leave you with nothing? These plaintiffs lost money when they thought they’d be getting lots of money. As the Feeley opinion linked in the facts-summary said: most of them probably knew they were taking a risk.

Not that someone isn’t ultimately at fault here.

But after digging as deep as I did — and finding some truly disturbing reactions to the situation, what I conclude shuts up the nostalgic side of me that initially laughed.

I have my reasons for not simply trusting the simple story that paints an individual in this type of scam as the mastermind. Usually, the mastermind is the one with the resources to get off scott free. In the excitement of validating my petty high school conflicts, I ignored what I knew about these types of cases. But I’m remembering what it’s like to be an adult again.

I think Dan Meier was a victim. Did he make some poor decisions? Certainly. Was there some avarice at work? I could see that. Can you absolve him of all blame? No. But who should really be the person hung out to dry here? Really, it looks like Mark Dain was the guy who lit the fuse on this bomb. His business went under, but where’s the article that says “Realtor caught in fraud case?”

Someone wanted to make sure Dan Meier lost even more than he already had. And after a man goes bankrupt in a case of this level, I don’t see how you can justify much more beyond this. He’s not Bernie Madoff. He’s this sometimes-slick, sometimes-goofy guy.

As for people calling for his resignation from my alma mater, I have my opinions, but I’ll keep those to myself. I felt like I owed it to the community to share the information I found. But I also owe it to the community to keep silent on some things.

I know, I know. As it is, I’ve probably already said too much. But I know I’m not a Robinson student anymore. I’m not the “Valor Dictus, that is” guy. My brother goes to TJ. The question of whether Dan Meier should remain as principal is not my battle. That should be up to the current community.

But, while there are a few possible interpretations to this story, do keep in mind that life isn’t that simple and this is hardly black or white. The older you get, the higher the stakes and the higher the stakes are, the worse your mistakes could be. I had my laugh at first and now I feel somewhat sorry for it. But hopefully I’ll take this with me the next time a snap judgment presents itself before me. As a truth-seeker, it’s not a good feeling to find out you were being an ignorant douche.

I know Robinson will go on and by next semester, it may be like nothing ever happened. High school is transient like that, in my experience. But I still wish the best for the Robinson community and hope that they’re keeping a more rational tone than the anonymous attackers on Fairfax Underground.

And, by chance, if Dan Meier gets to read this.

Thanks for the chocolate.