The Headmasters Papers (7 page)

(1)     They do poorer school work and less of it than formerly; never better and more.

(2)     They drop team and other organizational commitments; never add team and other organizational commitments.

(3)     They initiate less activity not connected to getting and using drugs.

(4)     They are harder to interest and to arouse.

(5)     They care less about non-drug-taking friends, about family, and about others in general than they did before their involvement with drugs.

(6)     They do not perceive or attach feelings to dramatic personal and academic losses and may even claim that they are functioning better and thinking more clearly than before.

(7)     They increasingly organize themselves socially around drug taking and associate predominantly with other drug-taking friends, even when there is no other basis of shared interest than drugs.

Schools, even this one to a degree, have been changed by the presence of drugs. This is difficult to be precise about, but without question faculty-student trust has been diminished since the onset of casual drug use by the young. By the very nature of the activity, students are unable to be truthful to parents and teachers about drugs. Student communication about drugs is necessarily private and furtive. Similarly, drugs are purchased and property exchanged for them in a clandestine manner, involving, often, theft and dishonesty.

At the national, aggregate level, aptitude-test scores have declined every year since psychoactive drugs have been on the scene. Moreover, the number of adolescent suicides and serious crimes has risen geometrically since the advent of casual drug use, just less than a generation ago. Marijuana and other psychoactive drugs are now the leading cause of referral to mental health treatment centers for the young. I have known
scores
of happy and functional families torn apart by drug use of a teenage member or members. I have known some of these families intimately; one of them, quite intimately. I know of no family or school where the corporate life has remained unaltered or been improved by drug use.

Nationally the drug culture is supporting a multi-billion dollar industry controlled increasingly by organized crime. Several South American and Central American governments have been reorganized in a disturbing manner to accommodate the booming U.S. drug trade.

And for what? A chemically induced, acutely toxic thrill? Pleasure? Pleasure at those costs? No society organized around the pursuit of here-and-now pleasure has sustained itself. I would be pleased if some of you history scholars would take time to test that hypothesis.

Have I carried things too far? Possibly exaggerated to make my point? I wonder. Frankly, I wonder. But this much I can say for certain: drugs have occasionally hurt Wells School—hurt individual boys, hurt our corporate trust, hurt our general morale. Drugs have hurt us when boys have been caught, and they have hurt us when boys have not been caught. You know this as well as I do.

And now we have Mssrs. Pennington, Stone, Wilcox, Hruska, and Slavin on the line. Five promising souls. Five boys I happen to like. And who knows who else?

I would like to close by advising you gentlemen that I have unlimited time on my hands for discussing any of the things I have just said. Please come by if you are concerned, angry, or just want to talk. I can't think of anything in the history of this school more important to talk about.

I think I'll leave it there. Report to first hour classes. All classes through midmorning break will be shortened by ten minutes.

Good morning.

9 October

MEMO

To All Faculty

Dear Colleagues,

I am afraid there is no softening the news: it's time for fall-term advisor letters. Since I have never been able to figure out how so many of you find the time to write them as extensively and as thoughtfully as you do, I shall cease to try. Rather than set firm deadlines by form, let's establish that all of them should be submitted to Marge no later than a week from Friday. I cannot set the date any later and still leave time for any parental correspondence and student improvement before the end of the term.

Please make them as presentable, grammatically correct, etc. as you can. If in doubt about the boy's schedule or family set-up, please consult files. By all means let's avoid cheerily addressing deceased parents, or remarried parents by former names. (The problem is, they always call
me
to complain; not, however, the deceased ones.)

One more thing: whenever possible, when communicating a problem to parents, indicate the problem
behavior
and not just the judgment. “One out of three homeworks not turned in” conveys more than “erratic” or “lazy.” If you are talking about someone's rudeness or insensitivity, recount some of the things the boy has said and done in its context. If possible avoid, “he is_____” in favor of “I am seeing a great deal of_____.”

I thank you in advance for your hard work. These letters are without question our most important school-home link.

J.O.G.

10 October

Mr. Jake Levin

R.D. 3

Petersfield, New Hampshire

Dear Jake,

I have enclosed my “cancer” poem (unfinished) for your consideration. It may interest you solely because of its discontinuity from anything else you have seen from me. Whose voice is that, anyway? I had the weird feeling, while working on it, that it isn't mine. A good shrink could tell me, I am sure.

Anyway, I'll be glad to have your appraisal. I know it's morbid. Is it anything else?

Everything is high-speed and fuddled here. The prospect of telling you my news exhausts me. Suffice it to say that school is noise, Meg is having a hard time. O for the peace that surpasses all understanding shantih shantih shantih, etc.

J.

CANCER

This sooty film over the tree line,
Over shops, over traffic,
These wires slung, netted over the intersection,
Here, where we are, idling in these fumes—
Is this new territory?

Do I or does my cancer see
The long-legged woman in the sheer dress;
Hear the click of her step on the pavement?
Is it all spoiled?
Have I spoiled it?

What has come over me?
My schoolgirl asks.
Cancer, my Death's head replies.
O rose, thou art sick.
I am failing, slightly, to replicate.

I am a ruined autocracy.
I imagine cold efficiencies in my lymph,
The reorganization already silently underway.
What fear swells in the throat is superstition here;
Prayer a quaint tradition.

For the time being
This voice at least is mine.
If you will listen, please,
You will hear where I leave off,
Where cancer begins its song or songs.

You are the devil, cancer.
You are legion,
Without passion, demoralizing
Me, my family, all of us—
Is this you speaking already?

No. Cancerous, I can chronicle,
Be true as I can be
To this mute pathology.
It's important to be true,
And there is nothing else to do.

Your first question: how it
feels.
One feels it very little—
A wan nausea
Which may very well be fear.
You've felt worse. Fatigue.

Perhaps later the flesh will startle.
What startles now is circumstance:
Regardless April is on again,
Sunny, softening up the land,
And geese are pleased enough to swim the cemetery pond.

All the quiet of a long day home
I muse in a museum of stale concerns:
In this very chair I have cared
Effusively about termites in the porch,
Conceived of, 
dared
 a station wagon,

Shaped, reshaped pictures
Of the same income and assets,
Looked to the cosmos for grounds for hating the chain saw,
Daydreamed myself entering, well-dressed and glib,
The parlors of the illustrious.

Now small narcissisms
Play about a more compacted world:
Something familiar in my fuss
About vegetables and vitamins,
Costs and benefits of a new chemical.

If I lose my hair to radiation,
I may win six odd, tuft-headed months.
I would read one hundred fifty books,
Hear traffic—and yes, and yes—
Behold in cancer twilight beloved faces.

(IN PROGRESS)

11 October

Mr. and Mrs. George F. Pennington

3 Bay Road Circle

Wellesley, Massachusetts

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Pennington,

I am writing to confirm officially the sad and frustrating news I conveyed to you over the phone last night: that on the recommendation of the Student Court and of the Faculty Discipline Committee, I have decided to ask you to withdraw Steven from Wells immediately.

I write this knowing full well the unhappiness this event has caused and will continue to cause in your family. But given the nature of the offense—bringing dangerous drugs into the school and selling them—there is really no alternative. To take any other course would be to disregard the welfare of, and to confuse, the rest of the school community.

I have always liked Steven and have found him a game, if not an inspired scholar, and an interesting conversationalist. I would not dare or care to assess whether his academic slump over the past few terms is related to involvement with drugs. Perhaps, though, this is a question you may want to pursue as a family.

Boys make mistakes, even very serious mistakes, and some boys rebound and learn from them. I have every confidence that Steven can get back on the track. I also hope this sad incident provides him a sufficiently dramatic occasion to separate himself from psychoactive drugs and everything to do with them.

My secretary, Marge Pearse, will send Steven's transcripts to whatever school or schools you indicate. Please address such inquiries and related material to her attention.

It is hard for us, too, to lose a sixth-form boy, in whom we also have invested much.

Sincerely,

John O. Greeve

11 October

To the Parents of:

Charles Stone (6th)

Terry Wilcox (6th)

Dear Mrs. Stone/Dr. and Mrs. Wilcox,

I am writing to confirm officially the upsetting news I conveyed to you over the phone last night: that on the recommendation of the Student Court and of the Faculty Discipline Committee, I must ask you to withdraw           from Wells immediately.

I write this knowing full well the unhappiness, to say nothing of the inconvenience, this causes in your household, but given the nature of the offense, there can be no alternative. In spite of clear and persistent cautions about drug traffic here, ______ arranged to purchase, did purchase, and apparently used LSD at the school.

Wells School has not always been a happy experience for_______. He has been on disciplinary probation within the last year, although not for this term, and he has generally impressed us as a boy who seeks his fun and solace outside the realm of school-work and activities.

It was not our business to investigate the extent of ______ 's involvement with drugs, but from various statements made to both the Student Court and to the faculty committee, the involvement seems to be extensive and various. Neither ______ nor his friend           expressed any contrition about the course of recent events, which may be a defensive pose. It may also be a serious concern. In my experience here many boys have rebounded from trouble, even serious trouble, but I have rarely—in fact, never—known one to do so while still involved in psychoactive drugs.

My secretary, Marge Pearse, will send transcripts to whatever schools you indicate. Please address such inquiries and related materials to her attention.

I close this letter with honest regret, but also warm hopes for brighter days on _________ 's horizon.

Faithfully,

John O. Greeve

11 October

Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel Hruska

5560 Ledgehill Road

Danbury, Connecticut

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hruska,

I am writing to confirm officially what I told you over the phone last night: that I have accepted the Student Court's and faculty's recommendation that we ask you to withdraw Ed from Wells immediately.

I know this decision has saddened and upset the Hruska household. It has saddened and upset Wells, too. As I wrote you last spring, I really thought that Ed was over the hump and would succeed here. I am practically certain that he was free of drugs during all of last year, and his impressive academic turn-around shows it.

One of the reasons I regret seeing Ed go is the loss to our community of a family like yours. You have been uniformly forthright and supportive in all of your dealings with us. No family in my memory has shared more thoroughly their son's past history, “warts and all.” What hurts so much about this incident is that I know how much you were counting on Wells School as a place where Ed could be free from old troubles. Sometimes I wonder if there is any place in the United States where Ed could be free from those influences. I wish Wells were such a place, but apparently it is not.

For what this observation is worth, it is my opinion that Ed was not really very close to the other boys involved in the LSD business. Three of the others are a form ahead of him, and as Ed admitted, they took little interest in him beyond his being a potential customer.