User talk:Fr. Wolf

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I hadn't bothered getting a userid for Wikipedia up until this point (just using my IP address and anonymity); most of my posts have been somewhat esoteric involving either financial or historical matters. I seem to recall helping create a couple of articles about obscure architects as well.

I created a userid recently because, after looking through the history and talk page for my prep school, I realized that a) I actually did still care and b) this would allow feedback and possibly interaction between those attempting to keep the story straight. My alma mater, like most expensive prep schools, has a tired and somewhat mundane history of heavy drug use, along with the typical coverups of parental child abuse that are sadly *de rigeur* at institutions of this type. Like with most academic institutions, it has become a business with all of the marketing (i.e., lying) that this implies. My personal sense is that the school itself is probably monitoring its listing on Wikipedia, although I don't have anything concrete to base this on other than personal experience with Ransom over the years. The school certainly never lacked for Judas goats in the past, and it wouldn't surprise me if something more subtle but essentially serving the same purpose was occurring.

I'm loosely considering writing an actual history of the school for Wikipedia, but I'm not sure I care that much. Anyone who goes to an elite prep school has most of the same stories - drugs, sex, and parental abuse/neglect. When I was a teenager, I was somewhat shocked by the disconnect between reality as purported and reality as it exists in academic institutions. Multiple degrees later, that is not the case, and this disconnect simply produces a vague tiredness. Be it Ransom, Gulliver, Exeter, or Andover, prep schools as institutions economically exist to place the children of the rich in first-tier colleges and universities. This is done by providing a good mercantile/modern (or grammar, as opposed to classical) education and by selling the qualities and minimizing the weaknesses of the students and their families.

When I was there, lots of students used and abused lots of drugs; lots of students were sleeping, often in fascinating combinations, with other students; lots of students were being either abused or neglected by their career- and money-oriented parents. This had not changed through the mid-90s when I stopped really keeping a close eye on the place, and is thoroughly unremarkable for a school of its type (or, perhaps, any school nowadays).

If anything, the one difference was the protection that the school afforded to the *parents* of the place. It was known, and in retrospect openly enough known that action should have been taken, that one girl was being routinely raped by her father during the period when I attended the school; a parent worth many, many millions and literally frighteningly powerful. Other students were being routinely physically and emotionally abused. In many cases the administration was aware of this fact. My sense is that the administration's passive response and lack of reporting at the time *was* unusual, and that this complicity was excessive even for a school of this type.

Lacking any relevant statistics, however, it is hard to know what, exactly, the continuum is for covering up child rape, abuse, and neglect at elite private schools. My sense is that a certain amount of research has been generated, but I cannot imagine that much of it is unbiased given the power structure of what is being examined. Through personal experience, my general view of the school is one of veiled disgust at the total lack of ethics or morality about the place combined with a grudging respect for the quality of the academic program. Many of the alumni I know are vaguely uneasy about sending children to the place; the economic value of a Ransom education is acknowledged while the sense that there was a sort of soul-sickness about the place is ever present. The real test of the institution will probably be how many of the healthy alumni decide to send their children to the place, or whether they simply start a school of their own (given the resources of the alumni network, not an impossible scenario).

[edit] Ransom Everglades

I made substantial changes to the Ransom Everglades article in an attempt to resolve the point of view dispute on that page. You were involved in the discussions about that dispute. I would appreciate your involvement in any further discussion - Owlmonkey (talk) 00:33, 20 January 2008 (UTC)