Comments on: In it for the Money: Mitt and Me

By: Milt

Milt — Thu, 17 May 2012 19:40:19 +0000

Kudos on this piece, Dave-o! Though it *is* regrattable that you left the then-gov high and dry. Retrospect is a b****, isn’t it?

Also totally agree on the bullying thing. I think it’s good that it’s changed and that adults and institutions take it so seriously now, but that means the word has taken on a whole new subtext. When I was a lad and a friend was held down in a locker room and defecated upon, or when a group of older boys surrounded me and beat and kicked me until they were tired, or when that kid from DeLaSalle was stomped to death in the early 90′s, so many people seemed to say “boys will be boys”. It meant that there was no hope, no adults to tell and no reason to do anything but start carrying around heavy metal objects that might be used as weapons in a pinch.

It at least seems as if times are better, but then I haven’t been in school for a few decades now. Plus these days I’m a 6ft tall, 210lb guy. So maybe it just seems better from where I sit. I can’t say for sure.

By: Jeremy Lopatin

Jeremy Lopatin — Thu, 17 May 2012 11:15:38 +0000

Excellent piece, Dave-o! Were it not for that institution, I’d be short one of my dearest friends. CK ’95.

By: Judy Foy

Judy Foy — Wed, 16 May 2012 16:21:38 +0000

“It’s a classic example of how institutions – real institutions with real traditions, INSTITUTIONS LIKE GOVERNMENTS (my caps) – make their progress: sidling and inch-long, often mind-numbingly slowly, but bending toward justice.”

Bless you. You betray your optimistic, youthful soul with this line, David Eric… A funny, compelling & pithy piece: I’ll do my part to bring it viral. Thanks!

By: Barbara

Barbara — Wed, 16 May 2012 14:14:49 +0000

As always, well done.

By: Rod Johnson

Rod Johnson — Wed, 16 May 2012 13:42:51 +0000

Thanks for this. It’s great to see Cranbrook through more relatable eyes. I went to Roeper, sometime between the time Mitt and you were at Cranbrook, and there was a lot of transferring back and forth between the two schools (and Country Day). I used to play soccer in a mini-league of Roeper, Cranbrook, Country Day and what was then called GPUS (“guppus”), now I think University-Liggett. Roeper students were always the odd ones out, being geekier, goofier[1], poorer (some of us) and slightly more ethnically diverse than the others, but for the most part we were treated well. The exception being, of course, Cranbrook. I always hated playing there because, not to put too fine a point on it, the students there were pricks. When I read the WaPo story, I was like, oh yeah, that guy.

[1] For instance, my friend Michael Dinwiddie, now a well-known playwright and the first gay black person I ever knew, used to, whenever he got the ball, run down the field screaming “UNGAWA!!” At prep schools this was not the done thing.