Suzy Harriston was popular on Facebook, with 300 people on her friends list, many of them from Clayton High School in Saint Louis.
Things started going south for her, however, when on April 5, a 2011 graduate and former Clayton quarterback Chase Haslett called Harriston out as a phony.
'Whoever is friends with Suzy Harriston on Facebook needs to drop them. It is the Clayton Principal,' he wrote.
Immediately after the public accusation, Suzy Harriston's profile disappeared, the Kansas City Star has reported. The next day, the Clayton School District announced that the high school principal, Louise Losos, will be taking a leave of absence the following Monday.
This past Friday, after about four weeks of silence from district officials, Losos announced her resignation effective June 30. She has been at the school since 2005.
The district explained the move by saying that the administration and Losos 'had a fundamental dispute concerning the appropriate use of social media,' according to the Kansas City Star.
During a special closed School Board meeting held before Losos' resignation, Chris Tennill, a spokesperson for Clayton, said the district would not elaborate on the nature of Losos' social media activity or connect it to the Suzy Harriston Facebook profile.
Losos has declined to comment on the matter.
The resignation of Principal Losos comes on the heels of another controversy at Clayton High School surrounding the recent firing of football coach Sam Horrell, and the two may be interconnected.
Horrell was dismissed last May as football coach after an investigation by district administrators found that he was 'engaged in strength and conditioning workouts with…students who attend Wydown Middle School,' thus violating state by-laws.
Last spring, some 250 students held a rally at the school in support of Horrell. Online, more than 700 people joined a Facebook group called 'Bring Back Coach Horrell.'
Horrell remained at the high school as a physical education teacher, but a day before Haslett wrote the post about Suzy Harriston's identity, the School Board voted 7-0 against renewing Horrell's teaching contract.
Officials explained their decision by saying that physical education classes lacked enough enrollment.
On the afternoon of April 5, after a post about Horrell's loss of his teaching job, some of the more active members of the pro-Horrell Facebook group received friend requests from Suzy Harriston.
Clayton parent Andy Brown was among Horrell's supporters who received a friend request from Harriston. He has been a vocal supporter of the coach and was critical of Losos.
Suzy Harriston had been Facebook friends with two of his children since May of 2011, he said.
A search of public records in Missouri found no results for anyone named ‘Suzy Harriston,’ and the district confirmed that no student by that name was enrolled at the high school in the last two years.
