School officials in South Hadley, Mass., are disputing claims that they had long known about the hazing of a 15-year-old student who committed suicide, reports the New York Times. On one point, everyone agrees: the high school students who taunted and threatened Phoebe Prince for three months, until she hanged herself, deserve to be punished. But acrimony over what school officials knew and how they dealt with the bullying of Prince, 15, has intensified since March 29, when the district attorney announced that nine students who hounded her would face criminal charges [1]. School leaders said the district attorney had gotten it wrong when she said that teachers and officials had long known about the hazing of Prince, a newcomer from Ireland who was relentlessly taunted as an “Irish slut” by some students after she briefly dated a popular senior football star. The district attorney, Elizabeth D. Scheibel [2], issued a terse statement on April 1 suggesting that the school superintendent did not know the facts. Lending support to the district attorney’s account, some students said in interviews that they had seen teachers witness bullying incidents or had seen a teacher console Prince as she wept. On the day she committed suicide in mid-January, she was seen crying in the nurse’s office, according to students…