impunity. They paid for criminal abortions with impunity.
The apocalypse was coming. Each day the class warfare
between students on the one side and faculty and administration on the other intensified. The lying, cheating faculty began to piss a lot of us of . They always presented themselves as being
on our side against the administration because this was how
they got laid, but slowly the truth emerged - they wanted the
appearance of professorship during the day and randy acces to
the students at night, between 2 and 6 being hours that carried
a lot of traf ic. As the tension grew, my best friend was closer
and closer to being tied down on the altar and split in half.
I worked out a plan. The school was governed by a constitution. The Judicial Commit ee had the right to expel students.
My plan was to cal a school meeting, ask everyone to submit
a signed piece of paper saying that she had broken the parietal
hours, and then expel everyone, as we had the right to do. Out
of a student body of a few hundred students, only about six
refused. The Judicial Commit ee expelled everyone else. In
effect the school ceased to exist.
It’s always the law-and-order guys who turn to tyranny
when they’ve been legally beat. In this case Bloustein exercised
raw power. He waited until graduation before reacting; he
sent a let er to al the expelled students' parents that said they
could not come back to school unless they signed a loyalty
oath to obey the school’s rules. I didn’t go back to school. I
would never sign any such oath. But I thought his tactic was
disgusting: it’s bad to break the spirit of the young, and that’s
what he did. In order to go back to school, students had to
betray themselves and each other, and most did. I learned
never to ignore the reality of power pure and simple. I also
learned that one could get a bunch of people to do something
brave or new or rebellious, but if it didn’t come from their
deepest hearts they could not maintain the honor of their
commitment. I learned that one does not overwhelm people
by persuading them to do something basically antagonistic
to their own sense of self; nor can rhetoric create in people a
sustained determination to win. I thought Bloustein did
something evil by making students sign that oath; how dare
he? But he dared, they did, and I left sickened.
Suf er the Lit le
Children
