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A STORY OF LOVE, PRIVILEGE, AND RESPONSIBILITY
BY TONY HALL
Left to right: Looking down at an elite New England boarding school in the 1960s; a boys high school swim team circa 1969. Opposite page, clockwise from top left: Jonathan Galassi, a lifelong veteran of the publishing industry- a published author, poet, former Guggenheim Fellow, and poetry editor of The Paris Review; School Days: A Novel by Jonathan Galassi (Other Press), $25 at amazon.com; three students seated together in 1969.
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THE LATE 1960S WERE ANNI HORRIBILES for Saint Grottlesex. Long hair. Drugs. Rock n’ roll. Inky Clark.
Clark, for those too young to have known him or even of him, was R. Inslee Clark, Jr., dean of admissions at Yale from 1965 to 1969. Not only did he open the gates to women, Clark appeared to prefer the graduates of public schools with high SAT scores to legacies and the sons of traditional feeder schools. The less impressive among the latter suddenly found themselves in odd places like Lake Forest College or the University of North Carolina. School Days, the prep school novel by Jonathan Galassi (Exeter 1967), unfolds across the final years of the WASP Ascendancy, a phrase coined by Joseph Alsop (Groton 1928) to characterize America’s dominant culture during the first half of the 20th century – the American Century, as Henry Luce (Hotchkiss 1916) branded it.
Leverett (a cross between Exeter and Choate) was once among “the oldest, richest and most academically distinguished high schools in the country,” admitting mostly “the scions… of what passed for an American aristocracy.”
By the time Sam Brandt returns to his old school to teach, some forty years later, the Establishment has lost its power (though not its appeal for “aspirational professionals”) and its moral compass. If, that is, it ever had one. Brandt is tasked with investigating an accusation of sexual abuse against the most popular teacher of his own era.
Above, from left: A student plays the guitar in 1969; band members practicing in 1969.
For not only was there long hair, drugs, and rock n’ roll on campus, there was sex. And lots of it. That, at least, is what Brandt learns during his investigation, in the course of which he finds himself confronting his own, long-dormant sexuality and recalling, wistfully, the (comparatively) chaste love he felt for his classmate Eddie.
Had his mentor Theo Gibson, the teacher alleged to have behaved inappropriately, “gotten out of line… handsy” with an old boy now threatening legal action? Indeed, he had, and not just handsy—and with more than one boy.
No less disturbing to Brandt is the discovery that the adminstration was fully aware of Theo’s transgressions and had, in fact, paid other victims hundreds of thousands of dollars to keep quiet.
Leverett (like its real-life models) prides itself on its mission, that of shaping an American ruling class that will use its privileges and advantages for the good of the nation.
Beneath the time-hallowed surfaces, though, Leverett is not much more than a pricey high school, one with a policy of open admission for the rich and one that shields pedophiles to keep the machine running. Its educational products, far from being the best and the brightest, are, for the most part, mediocrities.
Had the school deceived the generations that had walked arm in arm across “the Oval, the great lawn” or deceived itself? Was it, in reality, a corrupt purveyor of undeserved privilege? Was it ever thus?
Perhaps Old Ink was right. Time to begin anew. u