My shame is making me violent.

The BBQ Pit
1

I’m going to re-post this in my LiveJournal (sorry, all you original-content hounds- both of you) because it’s new and untrafficked and I would very much like to hear that I’m not going overboard here.
So today I came home to a letter from my high school’s Alumni office, informing me that a young man is no longer a student at the School because of actions that reportedly occurred on campus on February 18.

A quick Googling comes up with this:

http://www.macon.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/montgomery_county/11370135.htm
You simple-minded, ungrateful, deviant ASSHOLE.
What in the name of GOD could have been going through your head?

You’re ninteen years old. You were about to graduate one of the top schools in the country. You had the kind of future that few can even conceive, much less actualize. And what, you decided that a little immediate gratification was a good trade?

Don’t you dare tell me she wanted it, you piece of shit. She was in no position to want it. You’re a sixth former. You’re on the football team. By those two facts alone, there is an element of social coercion that, coupled with her age and third-form status, renders objectivity in such situations nil. Besides that, she said no. SHE SAID NO, you fucking idiot.

You were a young man of the Hill. Your responsibility, your obligation, is to be above such things. You broke school rules. You broke the law. You were given the opportunity to study at the Hill. You were given the opportunity to represent the Hill. And you pissed on that- you disrespected the school, you disrespected your classmates, and you disrespected me and every other alumnus who give of our time and money and good name in order to make the Hill the kind of place that the next generation of young men and women are molded into proper caregivers for our country and our way of life.

Call me old-fashioned and idealistic, but I believe that. And so do hundreds of other parents, alumni and friends who work so hard to create that environment for those who come to the Hill to study and to grow. And you took everything you’d been given and you turned it all to shit.

That young woman came to my school to become something. She came to my school because she had talent and aptitude and the desire to turn those things into a rich and productive life. And you turned it sour for her, you sick fuck.

You assaulted a member of your own community in the most evil of ways. You took her decisions from her and more. She will never get any of that back.

You got thrown out on your ass and you deserve worse. Let’s see a reputable school touch you now. I hope that every rejection, every door closed in your face, every hateful look you get from here on out is a reminder that all you had to do was be respectful of your community, of your School, and fucking control yourself.

I hope I never meet you, you waste of space, you blight on my School. I hope they lock you the fuck up, and I hope that what they say happens to people like you in prison DOES happen. Every fucking day. See how YOU like it when your “no” doesn’t work.

2

The article isn’t clear but did he rape her or did it stop at unwelcomed fondling?

3

While I understand/share your disgust at this guy for raping this girl - I’m confused about some things, namely:

Why did the school find it necessary to mail the alumni this information?

What is a sixth- or third-former? Why would that render her objectivity in this situation nil? Are you saying that she couldn’t have made a decision either way? Perhaps he thought the same and decided because of her status relative to his, she couldn’t possibly be making an objective decision when she said no.

Why are you focusing so much on the disrespect to the school/community instead of his disregard of another human being?

4

And why are you ashamed? Did you fund this guy’s education? Were you instrumental in getting him into the school? Did you introduce the two students?

5

The letter didn’t identify either party. The newspaper article did. The follow-up article in the Inquirer reports that he did, indeed, have sex with her.

A sixth-former is a senior. A third-former is a freshman. He was nineteen, she fourteen. By law, she is incapable of consenting to sex with someone that much older. And she didn’t consent. She said no.
Why am I ashamed? Because I donate a pretty good chunk of money to my School, and I do so because of the person it helped me become. And my money helps fund capital improvements and scholarships.

I played football in high school. And those of us who wore any kind of uniform representing the school had it impressed upon us that our visibility made it especially incumbent upon us to preserve and advance the good name and reputation of the School.

Because human beings disregard each other every day for one reason or another. This asshole had been given every opportunity to put all those reasons behind him. And because the opportunity he wasted was part of my legacy and could have been offered to someone more worthy. And because now I’m associated with a rapist and that angers me.

6

I think you’re taking it too personally. Are you ashamed to be a man because some men have beaten their wives?

I still find it more disturbing that you’re angrier about the good name/reputation of the school being sullied than the fact that this girl was assaulted.

7

Your two lines say different things.

I am angry because a member of my community has done something that a member of my community is not supposed to do. It hit closer to home than other such news reports do because it affects my community directly.
And how do you know which makes me angrier? Did you read my post?

I find it disturbing that you’d hijack a thread in order to nitpick the way I vent about what this asshole did.

8

mornea, I think it’s possible that Pup is not communicating as best he could because of his anger. The way I read it is that he is very angry about the assault and he is no way demeaning the young woman’s horrific experience.

I kind of understand where he is coming from. I think his point is that Hill School works very hard to select exceptional yound men and women, and he and other alumni have a great deal of pride in being given the chance to go to Hill.

When you are at a place like that, you are often told, and shown by example as well, that standards of behavior and what is expected of you are very high, and you are expected to live up to them, to exceed them where and when you can, and under no circumstances behave in a way that would sully the standards of achievement and behaviour set for you.

Being selected to go to a place like that carries a great deal of responsibility, and I think Gabe, and probably other alumni as well, are shocked and horrified that that young man, who was chosen from a great many and given a priceless opportunity, that someone who was invested with such trust, that he would behave in this way. He’s supposed to be better than that. He has let down the Hill School as well as perpetrated an awful, hateful, scarring assault on that poor girl.

My two cents.

9

I gotta point out that it’s just as much a tragety when a young woman at a crappy ghetto school gets raped. I’m offended by the implication that this crime was especially heinous because the people involved are in a shmantzy school. Just imagine for a moment that you are living in a community where this sort of thing is commonplace. This is what many Americans deal with every day.

But maybe we’ve learned something- even the best institutions arn’t neccesarily attended by only the best people. High status does not neccesarily mean you are an especially moral person.

10

sigh

Nobody is demeaning anyone else’s experience or pain.
The young woman (as you can read in the OP and the articles) was also a member of my community.
I’m posting about this specific assault because it happened in my backyard, as it were. If you want to Pit me because I don’t feel connected to every sexual assault victim on the planet, go right ahead and do that. But I’m Pitting this specific asshole because he betrayed an entire community- MY entire community- by his actions.

Where in the hell did I make that implication?

If I went to a “crappy ghetto school,” and a rape occurred there, I’d be just as angry about it. But I went to this school, and it’s becuase the assault occured there that I am upset, not becuse my school might look prettier than another.
Only here could I pit a sexual criminal and get called elitist for my trouble. :smack:

11

Well, I appreciate that you’re putting the responsibility squarely where it belongs—on Buncamper (what a name, BTW). And the belief that someone should live up to the uniform they wear, rather than letting it serve as their get-out-of-jail-free card, literally or figuratively, is one that I wish more people had.

12

Well, hell, HSHP, I understand where you’re coming from. It’s extremely difficult to get outraged at every Bad Thing that happens everywhere. As has been pointed out before on this board, if you did that, you’d be in a constant state of angst.
Even though I don’t give one Jack Shit about any of the schools I went to (not really into that whole “alumni” thing), I understand that because you were proud of where you went, and because you donate large amounts of your available cash to making sure that it stays a place to be proud of, it really sucks when it makes the news this way.
With one stupid action, this asshole has changed the way people look at that school, at least for a while, from

“Oh, you went to the Hill? Excellent school, congratulations, you’re hired,” sort of mindset to:

“You went to the Hill? You mean that place that cranks out rapists? Niiiiiice. Um, hey, don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

At least for a while, they’re now downgraded in some people’s minds from Nice, Prestigious School What Graduates Nice, Responsible Members Of Society to
That Place With The Rapist.

And it really sucks to find out that you’ve donated money to a school because you’re proud of it, only to find out that ONE asshole has tarnished its reputation.

13

Happy Scrappy, I understand your anger. But to insist on framing the man’s offense as a betrayal of the school, its alumni, and you does you little credit. I think there’s a more immediate victim here. Besides, surely you realize that the “community” you’re talking about has little in common besides wealthy parents, except sometimes for the subset of scholarship students (if any), whose commonality resides, probably, in resentment of the monied majority. This is so in many of the nation’s “top” prep schools (and there are lots more of them than they like to think about), and it only underscores the poverty of the hoary fiction that there are “people like us” who are above the sort of thing that they can usually ignore because it happens to people they never meet in all the best places. The most telling aspect of the school’s reaction to the incident, to me, is not the immediate mass mailing to alumni contributors (though that does give me pause). It’s the fact that the alleged assailant was met, when he got back to campus, not by police (even school police), but by the school’s “communications director.” First things first, I suppose.

14

Of course there is. And if you read my OP, I think you’ll notice that I’m more than angry at what he did to her.

ummmm… cite? I don’t know where you went to school, but, at mine, we were and remain a community, the basis of which is education and opportunity. It doesn’t matter how you came to us, it matters what you do once you get here.

I hate to tell you this, but there ARE, indeed, “people like us.” But “people like us” are defined by how we are made, not how we are born. “Like us” doesn’t mean “having money” or a “family name.” It means that we have all benefitted from the same example. It means we have all benefitted from living with, learning from, and supporting an environment of people who have decided to take one singular moment (acceptance to the community) and make a life of study and service out of it.

Let’s be honest. There are very few people in a school like this who do not WANT to be there. You have to apply to get in, you have to demonstrate the ability to contribute to the community, and you have to maintain your standing within it based on merit. I daresay that you cannot make the same claim about a public school.

There is no shortage of role models at my School. There is no “but I didn’t know better” excuse. There is no “inadequate social conditioning” excuse.
Pure and simple, this jackass betrayed one of his own- he made everything I just wrote above into a lie for one young woman who believed in that ideal as much as I did.

To quote my OP:

Now, I cannot really go off on the ordeal of the young woman. I don’t know her- I don’t know what she’s been through. I’m male, and I don’t know the young woman at all. I don’t have any connection to her beyond the understanding that what happened to her was horrible, cruel, and wrong. So I can’t effectively Pit him on her behalf as a woman, only as a similarly (albeit much more grievously) betrayed member of the Hill community. I pit him on behalf of that community.

It wasn’t mailed to “alumni contributors.” It was mailed to every alumnus and friend of the Hill, and its purpose was to inform us all that the offender has been removed from the school, to reassure us that the campus is indeed a safe place to live and study, and to direct us to the District Attorney’s office or the Communications Director’s office should we have any questions.

Ummm… where do you get this? If it’s from the Inquirer article, you might want to read it a bit more carefully.

He came back from the meet and was met. Not by the Communications Director.

There is no reason to turn this into an indictment of the prep-school community. If you ask me, this was handled very well. He was placed on administrative leave and barred from campus the day after the complaint. The day after that, he was required to withdraw and charges were filed. Now he’s going to trial. I fail to see what else could have been done in handling this.

15

The young man is accused of betraying one of his own. He’s not yet been convicted. Just thought I would point that out.

16

So, the modern, cynical view is that raping a 14 year old girl is a good thing?

17

Hoodoo, if you’re trying to be funny by quoting me out of context, you’re failing.
Call me old-fashioned and idealistic for believing that opportunities like Hill are to be repaid with adherence to a stricter moral and social code. I don’t buy into the benefit-only view of privilege. And I know that the concept is somewhat out-of-date now, but I believe that being a member of a community means that you first consider your obligations to that community long before you start banking on the benefits.
He had an obligation to the young woman he allegedly assaulted. And, regardless of whether he violated that by assaulting her, he also had an obligation not to commit statutory sexual assault. And even if the age gap were appropriate and there was consent, he (they) *still * had an obligation not to get down to it in a public area (or any area) of the School.

18

This is worse yet.

Does the fact that you deplore rape somehow demonstrate that you are not an elitist?

19

“Worse yet?”

How is it bad to expect someone with an education to put it into play?

Nobody has demonstrated that I am. I’m not sure what kind of corner you’re trying to back me into here, chief, but this is a thread about how a guy should have known better and didn’t, not about your need to start a class war.

20

By law, a fourteen year old can’t consent to sex in Pennsylvania, but the law does not always reflect reality. Whether or not she actually said no is something that is to be determined by a jury, is it not? That is what a jury at a trial is for. They are supposed to determine matters of fact, particularly in cases where there are no witnesses and each party claims the opposite of the other.

Maybe that’s because it’s an expensive boarding school and you weren’t just there because you happened to live within the district limits. I went to a regular, poor, country, public high school and there is no ‘alumni association’ and there certainly isn’t a big ‘community feeling’. We were a bunch of people who circumstance threw into the same rooms for a few years. So, I think there is a difference in your feeling of ‘community’ because of the kind of school you went to. I doubt you’d feel the same if you graduated from Podunk Public Senior High like I did.

And I didn’t learn from ‘people like you’ because I was poor, and I was a Podunk Public Senior High student. You really think I could’ve gone to your school? I don’t. I’d have been amazed if, at the time I was high school aged, my parents’ combined income was more than 1.5x your tuition.

Because she couldn’t have become something without going to a fancy schmancy boarding school like Hill School? Or do you mean that now that she’s an alleged rape survivor, she’s been ruined of her aptitude and ability to achieve? Because both of those are bullshit. I’m living proof.

Why? Why should the ‘moral and social code’ be any stricter than my moral and social code having graduated from Podunk Public Senior High? Because you had dorms, and uniforms, and a $32,500/year price tag?

I think it’s because of the repeated statements that someone from Hill School should’ve learned better from a better class of people than say, someone from Podunk Public Senior High. Someone like myself.

You assume that paying a fortune to wear a uniform and sit in a room makes one educated. There is no reason to believe that someone ‘has an education’ purely because they went to a big reputation school.