Kavanaugh and prep-school privilege
Like him, I grew up in alcohol-fueled culture
The whores on the hill. That’s the nickname that Georgetown Prep boys gave us, the students at a sister all-girls Catholic prep school.
The students at our elite schools are groomed to be charismatic, upstanding leaders in society. This, however, does not mean that the upstanding leaders of today could not have committed unspoken venialities in their youth. Put another way, the defense that “the person I know could not have done such a thing” is specious.
Like Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, I began my freshman year of high school in 1979. I attended the Academy of the Holy Cross while he started at Georgetown Prep. Like him, I was raised in Montgomery County, Maryland. Like him, I attended Beach Week, the week of debauchery when Catholic high school students take over Ocean City before the public school kids get out for the summer. Like him, I hosted and went to parties where underage drinking was the norm.
To be honest, getting “wasted” was the norm. The one thing you can count on with Catholic families is that they include older siblings who were available to help us acquire alcohol.
I do not know Kavanaugh or accuser Christine Blasey Ford, but I lived the culture in which they came of age.
When Kavanaugh gave a speech in 2015 at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law and stated, “What happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep. That’s been a good thing for all of us, I think,” he summed up the culture of entitlement perfectly.
We all knew we’d attend college. And we knew our parents’ jobs, economic status and proximity to Washington offered us opportunities. We knew a barometer of behavior existed based on these connections. We could be polite and engaging for the right audience at the right time. It was a social calculus.
Beyond that, the barometer created clear gender dichotomies. We were socialized, as good Catholic girls, to protect our chastity, which meant we had to protect ourselves against boys. In essence, we could socialize in our prep school circles, but it was our responsi- bility to control the boys because they could not be relied upon or expected to control themselves. Any failure was our shame alone. And alone we carried it.
Indeed, that was how male entitlement worked. Boys were taught they could take what they wanted. It was not their job to protect us. It was their job to protect each other from their misdeeds. The boys kept each other’s secrets.
The view that teen boys hold of girls when puberty is in full bloom comes as a surprise to no one. However, that view can become distorted when boys attend elite gender-segregated high schools. The absent gender is more easily dehumanized. She becomes a vehicle in which sexual urges can be satisfied without consequences. After all, she is the whore on the hill who let it happen. Add alcohol, and the sexual assault may not be remembered at all.
Mark Judge, an alleged witness to the assault against Ford, reflected on this culture in his memoirs. He recalled the underground newspaper he ran at Georgetown Prep detailing the alcoholfueled social scene. There’s a picture at a teacher’s bachelor party with students drinking and watching a stripper. A yearbook entry described Kavanaugh as treasurer of the Keg City Club and a member of Beach Week Ralph Club.
But there’s also the letter of 65 women assuring us their memory of Kavanaugh was of an honorable and respectful boy. I don’t doubt that. There was always the barometer.
Not all boys behaved in this manner. But some otherwise nice boys did, especially when inebriated. That Kavanaugh is an upstanding judge without a “blemish on his record” and thus could not have done what Ford asserts is a logical fallacy. Kavanaugh’s blemishless record is likely more a testament to the code of secrecy among his peers than a mark of his good character.
I do not know whether Kavanaugh attempted to sexually assault Ford or his other accusers. However, a sexually aggressive drunk boy can also be an honorable-seeming boy, who matures into the role of a supportive coach and mentor. Both traits can co-exist. One does not explain away the other.
In other words, the virtues of adulthood do not mean that the drunken iniquities of youth did not happen.