The Headmasters Papers (22 page)

But to tell the truth:

Your work shows ordinary promise;

That is, no special promise;

That is, no promise.

Pressed for information, you volunteer

Fragments of what you have heard us say,

Of what you have, uncomprehending, read.

You stand as noise to an idea,

Inequipped to know the knock of right.

Subtlety, sides of a question surprise you,

Two answers confuse you.

The trickles of your talk

Flow from or into no known stream.

Beginning, even as a bright-faced child,

You lacked background.

Unable to assert, you guess.

Yet you are friendly,

You get by.

You may well be loved.

Others, pleased by your shape or smell

Will touch you and be touched.

Loosed from all certainty, often afraid,

You will assemble and speak out,

Find all of it familiar,

And sleep.

1 March

Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Weisman

12 Club Crescent

Garden City, Long Island

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Weisman,

I am writing to put formally the unhappy message I had to bear over the phone earlier today: that our Student Court and Faculty Discipline Committee have recommended that David be dismissed from Wells for smoking marijuana on campus. As headmaster, I must accept the recommendation. The arrangements you suggested for picking him up are fine; he is welcome to stay in my house till then.

I understand that it is properly parental to be upset by an unexpected blow like this, but I am concerned about some of the points you raised and would like to explain a few matters of school policy. You, Mr. Weisman, advised me that we had better “do with David as we have done with the others.” I assure you that we have done so, in that we enforced a rule, the violation of which is a published cause for expulsion, a rule David signed a pledge to observe. What all boys get who break such rules is a process, designed and periodically reviewed by the whole school. According to the process, offenders are assured of a hearing before an elected body of their peers and a faculty committee. That process, carried out as thoughtfully as we can, is what we guarantee to disciplinary offenders. During the past twenty years while we, like all schools, were trying to make sense of drug use among the young, the severity of penalties may have varied with prevailing thinking. Over the past five years, however, prevailing thinking, at least ours, has been firm: marijuana and school life are antithetical. With very few exceptions over that period, offenders, even first-time offenders, have been dismissed from school.

Your question, “Do we mainly catch Jews?” I choose to take straight. Memory tells me not, that a great majority of boys dismissed for drugs and other offenses are not Jewish. Memory will have to serve, as that is not an account we keep.

My deepest concern is that in your hurt and anger over all of this you have not responded to the possibility that David may have a problem with drugs. I honestly suspect this is the case. David came to us last year a boy with modest but acceptable potential; in short, with promise. We have seen very little development in him since then. In fact, he has appeared to us increasingly deadened, participating little, often verging on trouble. These things are as much danger signs as the joint in his hand when Mr. Spires caught him.

Believe me, these are not headmasterly pieties. We 
lose
 boys to marijuana. I have lost a son to marijuana. If David's departure from Wells and our combined concern about him are dramatic enough, we may provide an occasion for him to reverse a dangerous course in his development.

I sincerely hope this is the case.

Faithfully,

John Greeve

2 March

R
EMARKS
T
O
T
HE
S
CHOOL

This past fall it was my unpleasant duty to talk to you about some boys who had gotten themselves in trouble with drugs. There were five of them, and as things turned out, all five were dismissed from Wells. We take time to talk about such things in chapel and we make hard decisions about such things for two basic reasons. First, we want to create an environment in which learning and personal development are most likely. The second is that we want to discourage others from following the path of those in trouble.

Apparently the October incident and the October talk were not adequate deterrents. We have lost another boy from Wells, our sixth this year. The boy is a fourth former, David Weisman. He was caught smoking marijuana in his room by a faculty member who smelled it two corridors away in his own study. The disciplinary proceedings were fairly uncomplicated, as there was not much in dispute. Mr. and Mrs. Weisman are of course upset and are on their way here to pick up David and his things.

As I said, the disciplinary procedures went without a hitch. However, some troublesome issues linger on. David admits that he likes to smoke pot. I suppose he has smoked on and off since he arrived. His pot comes from somewhere, very possibly from other boys here. He has probably smoked pot with other boys here. To do so he certainly had to be deceptive. He certainly must have lied. I'm not sure how many of you know David Weisman, but we are a small school, and certainly a good many of you do. Those of you who know him—perhaps a hundred or so of you—know that he hasn't gone in for much in the way of activities here, perhaps wasn't invited. You know that he hasn't done well in his studies. You know that he has been in periodic disciplinary scrapes, usually for avoiding things. And you know that he smokes marijuana. You know these things and perhaps find it hard to care about them.

I am starting to think I don't know very much about the drug problem in our school; and as to the caring problem, I haven't a clue as to what to do about that one. Maybe together we can work on those things. Otherwise there will soon be another David Weisman missing from the ranks, and when that stops mattering, Wells ought to shut down and sell its assets.

Good Morning.

3 March

Ms. Lucille Emerick

N.A.S.S. Records Service

Box 1000

Princeton, New Jersey

Dear Ms. Emerick,

I have received your questionnaire materials, labeled ADMIN, but I am sorry to have to decline participation. Questionnaires tempt me to lie and to exaggerate, so I always avoid them. Yours, incidentally, is the longest I have ever seen.

Good luck to you. Happily, I am not representative of SCHOOL OR COLLEGE ADMINISTRATOR.

Sincerely,

John Greeve

4 March

MEMO

To: Dave Tomasek

Personal

Dave—

I don't think I've ever received a formal written document from you before!

I appreciate the thought and the quality of the deliberations you and the head coaches have gone through on this St. I/Seven Schools mess. Your recommendation certainly makes the most sense from the practical standpoint, but, unless I am missing something, it seems to back straight down from the original issue, which is the important one.

I don't want to be prideful or stubborn about this. Between us, I phoned Fred Maitland last week and said in effect: why not come off this silliness? How about even a note to Seven Schools acknowledging a rough game in September and pledging support for better things in the future? No cigar. So I find myself in the position of not wanting
his
pride and stubbornness, just because they are firm, to carry the day. See what I mean?

I know you and your staff did not arrive at your position lightly, Dave, and you certainly could not have presented it more graciously, either in the conference, or in what you have written. But I am afraid I can't see it. Its justifying principle seems to be “the game must go on,” which is good but not quite good enough.

This is not to say that you aren't right or even that you won't prevail, but it is to say that your solution is not one I can stand by in good faith as headmaster.

John

5 March

MEMO

To: All faculty and staff

Re: Pre-vacation cautions

Colleagues:

The alluring prospect of Spring Recess is upon us, and if tradition holds, the greatest incidence of disorder, bad feelings, snags, snarls, and tears will fall about now, unless we hedge against fortune in the next ten days.

As usual, Marge, Phil Upjohn, housemasters, and I have put up heroic resistance to the barrage of parental requests to remove their boys, for compelling family and financial reasons, from Wells to the world's more vernal parts. Because we always say no, it is essential that we run full steam here until the 15th. Classes must meet and meet productively until noon on Friday and dorm staff must be on hand for an hour or so after that to pack off their tenants. I will assume this to be the case unless I hear otherwise from you individually.

Some reminders:

1. Collect all late work and papers and sit boys down for make-up exams and quizzes before the Recess. Letting these slide until afterwards is a source of unending trouble.

2. Observe schedule of testing dates, so that boys aren't all doing tests and handing in papers at the same time. If there is a log-jam we haven't detected, see Phil Upjohn.

3. Collect all outstanding fees, fines, and library books. Peg Detweiller tells me that the library stacks have never been more depleted due to overdue books and to books never checked out. I have trouble seeing why the latter is not simple theft. Would you please, both as teachers and advisors, urge boys to comb their rooms for books and to return them? It would be nice, at least for me, to avoid fire and brimstone on this one.

This has been a tough, grim stretch, and I am not speaking only for myself. If we can just see ourselves responsibly through the next ten days, the following seventeen (!) will be all the sweeter.

Thanks in advance,

J.O.G.

7 March

Mr. Edward Janeway

Who's Who in High School

17795 Front Street

Bloomington, Indiana

Dear Mr. Janeway,

I am sorry to be so late in responding to your inquiry, but there has been more than the usual crush of work here.

I am afraid I can supply no names or other information for your proposed directory. I do not see how you can tell “distinguished secondary school achievement” in a boy until he is at least fifty.

Good luck, though, with your project.

Sincerely,

John Greeve

7 March

Mrs. Sandra Searle

309 Rumson Road

Rumson, New Jersey

Dear Mrs. Searle,

I am sorry to be so late in responding to your kind letter, but there has been more than the usual crush of work here.

You do not mention what paper you read, so I have no idea of how my “stand” is represented. Whatever stand there is, however, is a school stand, and I am not sure that Wells differs much from other schools with respect to rules about student drug use. Nearly all schools forbid drug use. Where Wells may differ—and again I am not sure of the extent—is in the consistency of its response to violations. Although we like to keep options open for exceptional circumstances, we have generally dismissed boys who have violated the school's drug policy. That policy is made very well known to our boys and their families.

You praise our sternness in the face of so much permissiveness. I don't know about that. We come down hard on violators for the sole purpose of saving as many boys as we can from drugs' interfering with their maturity. Hard consequences deter. When we lose a boy, we don't feel terribly stern, but rather, having failed, a little sad.

It's still an uphill battle with drugs, isn't it?

You were kind to write.

My good wishes,

John Greeve

7 March

Dr. Louis Giannini

National Institute of Drug Abuse

Rockville, Maryland

Dear Dr. Giannini,

I am sorry to be so late in responding to your invitation for me to speak at your symposium, but there has been more than the usual crush of work here.

I must decline your kind invitation. The reasons are largely practical, but I am also convinced I have nothing extraordinary to say about “Designing a Drug Policy for Schools.” To me the problem has always been easy to understand: Drugs impair the way students learn and the process of growing up generally. The solution has also been clear: to forbid drug use and to deal strongly with violators. I don't think there is a speech in that.

I would like very much to be able to hear first-hand the current professional thinking about youthful drug use, and I would like to send some faculty to the symposium.