The Hub of Politics

Around these parts, you don’t have to say anything else and everyone you talk to immediately knows precisely what you’re talking about. “The Milton Academy Story” is a sordid, salacious tale of teens, sex, privilege, and the reputation of a 205-year old school that educates those who will likely grow-up to become Wall Street power-players, Congressmen, Governors, Prime Ministers (many of the school’s students come from abroad), the rich and powerful who live in gated communities most of us will only see if we drive through the upper-crust neighborhoods in places like Greenwich CT, Short Hills NJ and Brookline MA.

But for now, some of these children of privilege are in potentially really big trouble.

A little background – on February 19th, a Boston Globe piece by Donovan Slack broke the a story that started-out sounding like something from a pulp-fiction novel (or a bad porno movie)

Milton Academy expelled five students on the boys' hockey team yesterday for allegedly engaging in sex acts with a 15-year-old female student in a boys' locker room last month, according to a school spokeswoman.

(Note that it is not practical to directly link to the full text of any of these articles as they are likely to be in the paid archive section of boston.com before too long. I will attempt instead to appropriately credit the authors of the pieces. The story was also picked-up on the 19th and subsequently carried in the Boston Herald.)

Here’s what is known about what happened (with no lurid details) as detailed in a follow-up Donovan Slack piece on February 23rd, quoting from a letter sent to the parents of the pre-school’s students.

The head of Milton Academy sent a letter to parents yesterday, offering new details about what happened the night school officials say five varsity hockey players received oral sex from a 15-year-old sophomore girl in a school locker room, triggering a police investigation.

The episode lasted about 15 minutes, according to the letter, signed by Milton Academy's head of school, Robin Robertson. After dinner and before study hall on Jan. 24, the players, ages 16 to 18, headed to the private academy's athletic center, where they used a passcode to enter a boys' locker room reserved for team use during practices and games.

The girl joined them and subsequently fulfilled a request that she perform oral sex on the boys, one by one, in a shower area, the letter says. Toward the end, two male students who were not involved happened to walk into the shower area from an adjoining locker room. The first six students dispersed.

The school notified the police (the 15-year old is under the age of consent in Massachusetts, so technically speaking, a felony was committed – even if there is no allegation of sexual assault), expelled the 5 boys and placed the girl on "administrative leave" – making a concerted effort to let everyone know that the young lady is not being punished for her participation in this affair. The girl’s parents have stated that, at least as of yesterday, they had not decided whether or not they intend to press charges. At least one of the boys’ families has announced (as appeared in today’s Globe) that they have secured the services of a well-known criminal-defense attorney – something that at a minimum seems to me to be an obscenely prudent thing for them to do at this time.

How this got out is not known precisely, but it is not at all hard to figure out speculatively. The incident occurred on January 24th and was witnessed by at least two people who were not participants. It is therefore likely that the school was abuzz with the news of this (hopefully) unusual event by the next morning. There are also unsubstantiated, 3rd-hand accounts (mostly heard on talk radio) from young ladies who would audibly appear to be contemporaries of the young lady in question that she was bragging-on this even at parties in Newton (a nearby city, for those not familiar with the area) the following Saturday night. I don’t put too much stock in these accounts, but the bear noting as they are certainly part of the conversation around here.

At some point, it seems obvious that the faculty and/or administration of this secluded, closed campus would get wind of these allegations in short order. The administration conducted a 3-day investigation that resulted in the expulsion of the boys and discharging of the girl on February 18th. The school also notified the Milton Police Department - at which point it is inevitable that the story would be public, so the school put the story out there that afternoon (the source for the 2/19 Globe story). Within a couple of days, it was everywhere in the local media and a hot topic of conversation on and off talk-radio.

With that as the background, it’s time to get down to the issues of this affair. First, the criminal aspect: quoting from the February 24th Globe piece by Slack and Michael Levenson:

Under Massachusetts state law, an individual can be prosecuted for having sexual intercourse or "unnatural sexual intercourse" with someone under 16, even if the sex is consensual.

Sounds cut-and-dry, right? Things rarely are that way, however.

Continuing from the Levenson/Slack piece:

"Milton Academy cannot tolerate situations in which any individual, regardless of gender, is pressured, consciously or unconsciously, to perform sexual acts," head of the school Robin Robertson wrote in the letter.

Curiouser, and curiouser, as Alice might say. Does this not hold out the possibility that maybe at least one of the boys did not go along willingly? Also, as may not be clear from the original story as quoted above, there was apparently some time between the time when the boys secured entry into the locker-room with their passcode and the time at which the young lady joined them. How long? No one seems to know – but it seems obvious that the young lady had plenty of opportunity to bail-out of the situation if she chose to. Would this not tend to negate the possibility of coercion? But again, things are rarely that simple, and everyone's interests in this case - as will be obvious presently if they are not by now - are mutually exclusive.

The school … sa(id) the 5-to-1 ratio represented coercion, whether implicit or explicit.

Well, that would seem to be somewhat contradicted by the facts of the case as highlighted previously, right? But then, the school does need to be more than a little concerned about how this sort of thing could happen.

The state Department of Social Services, meanwhile, confirmed yesterday that it is investigating what happened and whether there was enough supervision of students. ''What we do is make sure there is nothing neglectful," said Denise Monteiro, spokeswoman for DSS.

If the school is found to have been neglectful, Monteiro said, DSS would notify other state agencies, such as the Department of Education and the Office of Child Care Services, which sets guidelines for child care.

Thus, it’s in the school’s interest to see to it that the boys are found responsible for this reprehensible behavior, and it seems to me the only way to do that is to demonstrate coercion in some manner or form. Finally,

Robertson's letter cites the student handbook, which specifies that students are expected to uphold the rights and well-being of others. ''Therefore, impinging on the well-being of others is an unacceptable breach of this value," the letter says.

I do not take issue with the expulsions, to be honest. The fact that standards have crumbled to the point that youngsters seem to think the can get busy on school busses on the way to school doesn’t mean that Milton Academy has to drag their standards down with society.

There are more than a few issues that arise from this incident that to my mind expose larger societal concerns:

• As there is no allegation of coercion, then why was the girl not suspended as well?
• If we're supposed to believe that women are capable of making their own decisions in this regard (I know, she's 15 in this case - and consent cannot legally be given at that age), then why is she not seemingly being held in any way responsible for her actions?
• Were age of consent laws truly meant to be applied when all of the parties involved are within 3-years in age of each other?
• Do you believe that all of the boys were willing accomplices? Or do you think one of more of them might have been pressured into it? (Can't you see that situation arising - "You don't want to? What are you, some sort of fag?”)
• How widespread do you think this sort of behavior among teens is? (BTW, if you think it's limited to high-brow prep-school campuses, you're delusional.)
• Milton Academy costs $32,725 for boarding students (the girl and four of the boys were boarders), $25,675 for day students. Do you think there are a few parents wondering what in Heaven’s name is going on at a school they’re shelling-out private college level tuition for?
• If a boy was caught in the girls' locker room, or even in the girls' dorm of the campus, even with an invitation, don't you think he would have been suspended immediately?
• How much pressure do you think there will be on this 15-year old girl (who, recall, is home on "administrative leave") to change her story? In other words, how long before you think an allegation of coercion is made?
• If the stories about the young lady bragging about the incident at parties the following weekend are indeed true (a mighty big if, to be sure) prior to the story breaking in the press, is that an indication that this behavior is not only common, but something kids today believe is something to be proud of?

I'll be frank; this sort of behavior makes my flesh crawl. It is disgusting. It is shameful to think that a "Lewinsky" is given out casually as party favors by 15-year olds - and my nausea is due only in part because I have a 10-year old daughter of my own. I'm not that old (39), and I'm certainly no prude - but I can say with total confidence that this sort of behavior was not at all common among High Schoolers in the early 80's - at least not in my neighborhood.

At a minimum, I suppose we could hope that something would be learned from this affair. However, I’m not convinced. With the way the young lady is being treated (and again, I only say this because no allegation of rape has been made – and seems unlikely to be credible given the circumstances) it seems to me that she, or any other young lady so inclined to participate in this sort of activity, is likely to learn very little in a positive sense from this case.

In fact, it appears that the only thing learned by a member of the "fairer sex" from this incident is that that she can behave like a slut and suffer precisely zero consequences for those actions - except perhaps some small embarrassment at being "outed" and having to face her parents - something I seriously doubt would bother anyone capable of debasing herself in this manner.

It would appear that “hooking-up”, as this sort of activity is evidently referred to, has become the new 2nd base - and is seemingly treated just as casually by today's teens and pre-teens.

How common is it? Well, in my (lilly-white, middle-to-upper-middle-class, suburban) home town, a SIXTH GRADE GIRL was suspended a month ago for the rest of the school year after being caught in flagrante delicto in a school stairwell, during school hours, participating in an identical behavior, with a SEVENTH GRADE BOY.

Because of the nature of that particular case, not a great deal is publicly known about the particulars – which has not however stopped anyone in town from talking about it. The prevailing "wisdom" among the chattering classes in town (virtually everyone - it's a very small, townie town) is that self-esteem issues may have been the root cause.

The girl in question (the 6th-grader) was unpopular, heavy-set (though apparently not "fat"), braces, not "trendy"-looking, etc. In other words, a perfectly normal 12-year old - in the eyes of most people. But in her own eyes, perhaps the ugly duckling that needed something extra to get with the "in crowd".

Tragically, it didn't work. Nearly as tragically, no one in town seems to see this as a failure of parenting – at every single level of this young girl’s now rather messed-up life.

The times they are a-changin' – and not for the better for our kids, I’m afraid.

Look, we can gripe about Our Past President in this regard all we want. The plain and simple fact is that, while his pathologies, and lack of candor regarding them, certainly have not helped stop the slide of what little was left of our moral fabric, this has been degrading for quite a while. We're seeing the logical end-result of the sexual revolution - girls can act as just piggish as boys, anything goes, debasement is just another rite of passage.

Joy.

[update: 20050225 20:38] It would appear that I have incorrectly credited the authors of the original Boston Globe story from February 19th. The authors of the original story were Globe correspondents Jennifer Nelson and Kaitlin Thaney with an assist from Maria Cramer, and the original story can be found, for the time being at least, here.