Naked in School-Kevin and Denise
When I woke up on Wednesday morning, I felt a bit off-kilter; usually I feel rested and alert. Now I felt somewhat disturbed. I had dreamed during the night; usually I don’t remember my dreams but now I began to recall, not the actual dream, but impressions of what the dream was about. In it, it seemed that shadowy figures were moving around a web, like a spider web, and one of the figures resembled Abover. It was a hulking shape, had a swollen face, and one arm was hanging limply. The whole image had a sense of threat and danger. It seemed my subconscious was trying to send me a message. I sat on my bed for a few minutes to collect my thoughts and then went to my computer to send an email. I saw a message from Dan, but that would have to wait.
I sent an email to Bob, briefly telling him of my concerns about Abover. He hadn’t behaved like an educator with kids; he behaved like a thug. It was how he spoke to me in his office, how he had dragged Denise around on Monday morning, how he smirked at the kids’ discomfort, and what I had heard yesterday about how he’d treated the Program kids. Something didn’t seem right—perhaps that was what my subconscious was telling me. So I asked Bob to try to investigate Boris Abover, get a background check done, and see if anything turned up.
Then I made an extract of the files I had created that were based on Sarah’s notes: a list of Program rules violations by teachers and a separate list of the names of the teachers who were said to have been involved. I printed that off. Then I showered, dressed, had breakfast, and left to pick up Denise.
When she got into the car, I turned to her and grinned. “Good morning; you look like you’re ready for another exciting day,” I joked.
“Yeah. You think maybe today will be a normal one for a change?”
“Sorry. Not a chance. Today, instead of me getting called to the office, I’m gonna go to the office first and ask for a meeting with Fletcher.”
“Oh my, what now? Something from our work session yesterday?”
“Yeah. Actually I thought of something this morning that Fletcher needs to know about.”
“Wel-l-l-l... ok, I guess. Be careful—try not to take over the school now, you hear?” she kidded, uh, was she kidding with me?
As soon as we entered the school building, I saw Fletcher talking to a teacher just off the lobby, He saw me and motioned me over.
“Kevin, Denise, just wanted to let you know that the board approved basically everything we spoke about on Monday.”
“Thanks, sir, good to hear.” I saw Denise smile broadly. “Sir, another thing has come up that’s closely related and may help you in doing the rules clarifications you mentioned that would be handed out on Thursday.” He got a guarded expression. “No, this isn’t about making any policy changes at all; but it may be a matter that will help the Program to be better accepted by the students. Can I see you in your office, please?”
“Hmmm,” he said, “this is the first time I’ve heard of a student calling the principal for a meeting. Usually we do it the other way around.” Denise giggled and squeezed my hand. “Ok, why not? Just another part of this week’s disaster. Denise, you’re in Kevin’s home room?”
“I am, sir.”
“Good. Please tell your teacher where Kevin is, ok? Thanks. Ok, son, let’s go talk.”
After we were seated in Fletcher’s office, he looked at me hard. “Now you’re not going to be asking for more concessions, right?”
“No. But you need to know this. You know that my learning about the existence of this whole Program thing was kind of a shock to me. I had no inkling that anything like this existed. So yesterday I was asking other students what their feelings were about it and I learned, as you probably know, that they are apprehensive, no, scared, of being selected. They told me it wasn’t because of the mandatory nudity; it was because of how they were treated.”
“Wait, Kevin...”
“No, please, let me continue. In my talking with them, I could see that if the Program is run according to the rules in that booklet, the kids will accept it better. What you need to know is that during last term, the rules weren’t followed. Did you know that, sir?”
“What do you mean? Of course they were followed. Mr Abover saw to that. He met with the teachers and gave them detailed instructions about the rules and what they were to do. He had the teachers send any student who had a question about the rules to him so he could explain the rules, and he also decided any disputes and challenges. He gave me a report twice each week about the Program.”
“Then you’ll be surprised to learn that he must have had his own set of rules.” I pulled my printout out of my backpack. “This is a list of things kids saw last term. Some of these incidents were reported to me by Program participants and some by bystanders. They all have a common theme. You notice that when anyone objected, they were summarily punished. You’ll also notice that certain teachers appear to have been working from a different set of rules, like that one report about mandatory relief...”
“Relief isn’t mandatory,” he interjected.
“In at least that instance, it was. What about that one about a teacher selecting the person to give the participant relief?”
“That’s not in the rules either,” he said.
“Where do you think the teachers got the idea that they could substitute one set of rules,” I pointed to the sheet I gave him, “for another?” I held up a Program booklet. “The kids told me that Abover gave the teachers a list of rules to follow. The teachers I listed on that sheet were the specific ones who I was told about who violated the official Program rules. I think you should see if you can find anything written, maybe a list of alternate rules. Maybe Mr Abover has a list in his office. Is he back to work yet?”
“Not till tomorrow.”
“Then I suggest you try to find something that shows he had another set of rules. Or if one of those teachers will come clean and ‘fess up. If my theory is true, then Mr Abover was running his own version of the Program right under your nose. And that brings up this other issue, a directly related one. In doing his management of the Program here, Abover was acting as the executive—he was in charge of the Program; as the legislator—he was making the rules; as the judiciary—he was deciding appeals and making interpretations of the rules; and as the executioner—he was imposing the punishments from which he permitted no appeals. Dr Fletcher, I haven’t had the opportunity yet to take a civics or government class, but did get the syllabus for that class off your website and did some of the readings. What this is, is a violation of the principle of separation of powers, and it’s allowed Mr Abover to essentially become a dictator.”
“Kevin, that’s a serious accusation.”
“Yes, it is, but what I heard, if it’s really true and I have no reason to think that it’s not, it’s the only logical conclusion that I could draw. It would also explain why the kids here are so anti-Program, don’t you think?”
“Well, since you mention it, some of my colleagues at other schools didn’t have anything like the problems we had in the first month.”
“There you go, something here started out differently.”
“I hate to admit it yet again, but perhaps you’re right...”
“I hope that what I’ve suggested is the cause of the kids’ anger at the Program. But this leads me to want to make a suggestion that I hope you’ll seriously consider; it has nothing to do with the way the Program itself operates, but it would alleviate the sense of despair over the possibility of instant retribution for anything that a participant may or may not do in the Program. When a vulnerable person is forced into a compulsory situation, then any request made of them is automatically coercive, and fear of unknown and possibly random consequences can be crippling. What I’m saying is this. If you violate the ‘A’ rule, the code says your punishment is ‘B.’ It shouldn’t be a random choice from ‘C’ or ‘E’ or even ‘Z’ at the sole whim of the punisher, if that’s a word. But that’s exactly what happened here last term.
“So I’d like to respectfully request that as a part of the guardian corps, which I understand the district has approved, that another of their roles be as a kind of advisory judiciary, together with school staff, to consider appeals and make recommendations, which don’t have to be binding but will bring a measure of fairness to the sanctioning process. I think the guardian corps is appropriate since it’ll consist of Program graduates, students already familiar with the levels of stress they themselves endured and who will have some degree of empathy for others in the same situation, but will want those newcomers to experience the same benefits and feelings of achievement they got out of the Program. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this stuff! You know how much I abhor this whole business, but I feel that if you crack some eggs, you don’t throw them away; you make an omelette.
“In the civics materials I’ve read there’s a strong precedent for a student group like that; it’s the student judiciaries that lots of schools have and their function seems to be conflict resolution and interpretation of student bylaws. Things like that. It would be a natural extension of the idea to include the Program as part of that function. If it’s strictly advisory, it wouldn’t need federal Program approval or probably even local board approval, I should think.”
“Kevin, you’re hitting me with so many new ideas it’s hard keeping up with you. I agree that we need to do something urgently and emphatically to get the students to willingly accept the Program and not be so resistant. So I will look into your allegation of Mr Abover’s alternate rules list and consider your idea for a judiciary—but I will need to explore that idea with our attorney. You’re right about the school board; we had already been having some discussions about my establishing a student court; the board agreed that any decision to set this up would be mine alone, but then the Program came up and I suppose I just dropped the idea. Let me reconsider; there are a number of technical, legal, and administrative issues involved because of the Program and our resident Program official. I most likely will want to talk to you further on this, you seem to be an unending reservoir of ideas. But you actually need to be in school now—after all, you’re a student, not an administrator, and I think you’ve managed to blur the line in your case between the two so successfully that I never know how I should deal with you. So get to class now! Be a student for a change! Get a pass from Mrs Maples; you’re already missed first period twice and you’re already late again today.” He smiled as he waved at me to get out.
I got my pass and added it to my stack of first-period excuses.
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