Has She Been Kicked Out of Fashion School?

Let the speculation begin. Then again, it pretty much already began as soon as Amanda Bynes was arrested for DUI on Sunday. Despite doing so well in her recovery that she was practically a news nonentity — happy celebrities are so boring, am I right? — a wealth of rumors are now flying about how Bynes has been out of control behind our backs all these months. While we thought she was improving and staying out of trouble, apparently she was five seconds away from snapping again. The latest story is also the saddest. Allegedly, Bynes was expelled from fashion school last month, but it's best to take this revelation with a grain of salt.

Bynes has been enrolled in the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising up until now — or so we thought. However, according to the TMZ report, she was always "showing up high [to class] and offering fellow students money to do her homework", not to mention throwing a fit when she was called out for cheating on exams. This erratic behavior led to her being expelled from FIDM and was one of the indications that all was not well with her. However, something about the story just sounds... off. After all, may I point out that we live in a world where people will freely and eagerly talk to news outlets about any celebrity they see anywhere ever?

If Bynes had been expelled, especially for a reason like that, how did it take this long for someone to leak it to a website like TMZ? The article doesn't specify exactly when Bynes was kicked out, but it just seems strange that no one would come forward with a story like this until after she got arrested for a DUI. That would have been breaking news even before the arrest. Add that to the fact that Bynes was out looking happy and healthy as recent as July and it seems weird that she could have turned up to school in September, constantly high and acting erratic, without anyone noticing or leaking it to the media.

Of course, stories about Bynes and her behavior have always been insane and largely inaccurate. I don't doubt that there's some truth to the fact that she was expelled from FIDM, but I think there's got to be more to the story than what the TMZ student sources are saying. Above all, even if Bynes is beginning to fall into her former behavioral patterns, I hope she is able to get the help that she needs to get back on the positive and healthy path she's been on in the last year. And I hope that the media will let her get better instead of throwing her mistakes back in her face, as was often done during her recovery.