Identity, Importance, Connection -

  Last week two separate events were spinning around my life which were very troubling and severe to the people that they affected. Though they were two totally different scenarios, they both could be boiled down to the same fundamental human needs: identity, importance and connection. That is probably why they were so poigniant.
  At a High School Boarding school, where 800 kids live together 8 months of the year, tension escalated over the expulsion of a PG student for being caught drinking with a friend in his room late on a Thursday night. The teenagers who were good friends with the "PG" believed that the same hallmate they had had many previous conflicts with before was the person who had alerted the teachers to the fact that the kids had been drinking in their room, so one night when they were sitting around bemoaning the loss of their friend and the strictness of the administration, one kid impulsively got up, went out, and smeared some splotches of red face paint on the "snitch's" door.
  The next day the boy accused of snitching went to the Administration asking to withdraw from the school, the Administration began a hunt for the "door-painter", and powerful social tensions began at the school.
  Because the door-painter would not come forward for a long time, the school began removing all student privilages, rightly knowing that, especially at this age, there is no greater force than social force to get kid's attention. As each one was removed (tv.usage, curfews, Spring Formal cancellation, etc.), students from other halls and other dorms began to turn on any friends who might be associated with the witless boy who painted the other kid's door.
  The faculty could not believe that the kids who did know who the door-painter was would not rat out their friend and became enraged by what they perceived to be a lack of respect for authority. The greater part of the school now, turned almost as viciously upon that group of teenage boys, as the one boy had originally turned on the other on that first night..... A Catcher in the Rye Moment?....
  After a week of this pressure the 10 friends convinced the offender to admit his own guilt whereupon he was kicked out of the school. The contentious hallmate (who does not admit to "snitching" in the first place) remains at the school. And the Administration is now dealing with questions  about why a similar group of boys in the Fall did not receive scrutiny after girls had complained about a harassment issue then.
 But questions have been raised to these youngsters about what is more important at their age: meeting life's goals, work, fun, impulsivity, loyalty, identity, connection, respect.... In what order, and to what degree! They are all necessary. And what is the power of connection. Even though they banded together not to denigrate their friend of character (who admitted acting badly), the power of an even larger community really affected their decisions.
  Next story tomorrow.