So are people kept against their will at this place? Whats the deal?
A CB survivor in another thread spoke to this, but I can't remember which thread it is. It sounded identical to the line they gave us at CEDU, and I believe I even commented on it in that thread.
A student was held hostage through intimidation and mind-fucking. Do you want to leave? Fine, go ahead. There are no walls here. There are no gates or fences. Of course, where will you go? You're out in the middle of nowhere. You might get raped by a trucker. (as one kid actually did, and the staff milked that event for all it was worth, often in the presence of the victim)
If someone did split, and they weren't 18, they'd send the van out after you to pick you up. Blownaway (who has his splitting story in the CEDU section of this site) talks about his ordeal when he split, trying to keep to the backwoods so he wouldn't be apprehended by staff. He caught the search vans going by several times looking for him.
If you were lucky enough to make it into town (Bonners Ferry), normally the sheriff would snag you and bring you back to campus.
...that is, until he was allowed to sit in on a rap. After that experience, he said he would never send a kid back there again, and as far as I know, he never did. (Blownaway became friends with him, I believe.)
Now, I am fairly certain that CEDU was pretty much required to do this, since they were temporary custodians for all students, (even though they weren't legal guardians) and if the student was underage, they were therefore responsible, since if we got lost, they would get an earful of "wtf did you do with my kid" from the parents. So, I don't exactly take issue with the fact that they wanted to come looking for you. However, the circumstances regarding why students left, and the taunting that often preceded (or tried to dissuade) a splitting was more than just a little bit toxic. There was also mixed motivation in finding said child, since fear of a liability lawsuit held just as much weight as concern for the kid's welfare. (of course, their welfare wasnt exactly considered once they got back)
And then of course, the consequences weren't exactly much better, and obviously was also used as a deterrent.
When kids were brought back they were subjected to any number of different kinds of restrictions. Normally splitting meant either getting on a full-time or going down to survival school in southern Idaho, which was a major suckfest. By the time you got back from survival, you were happy to be at RMA, since at least there, they had fun things like heat and food and showers. blownaway spoke about how thrilled he was to be back from survival, simply because he was starving. I witnessed several kids come back from there. All of them had lost a considerable amount of weight, many were covered with infected insect bites (unless it was in the winter), and most of them had parasites. (giardia) I actually had an expedition down in that same area, and drinking that water without boiling it first will get you hellishly sick. If you were dehydrated and couldn't wait to build a fire to boil it (building fires in survival, btw, required using a bow drill) you'd get the parasite. Our expedition was lucky because we were allowed iodine tablets, but on survival, it all has to be boiled.
So.. there was nothing that was physically keeping us on the grounds. However, if we were underage, and we left... that was when shit went down.
Most of us felt a large sense of futility in even trying, since the location was so remote. The walk to town was maybe a one to two hour trek if you kept to the roads, which normally meant that you would eventually get picked up. A couple of guys in my peer group got as far as the Canadian border by hitching a ride in a boxcar, which is pretty fucking dangerous, especially if you value your legs.
CEDU running springs was even worse. You could see the city lights from campus, but the trek down the deceptively hikeable hill was actually quite treacherous. It kind of reminds me of alcatraz. You could see SF and it seemed sooo easy to cross... until you got in that freezing motherfucking cold water, and had to deal with currents that were a hell of a lot stronger than they looked.
An upper school student who was of age split while I was in Voyageurs, and a friend in his peer group walked him out. They had a last light about it, (i.e. the daily before bedtime thingy) and his friend was saying how he was just sick of it and decided to go. He was allowed to, of course, because he was an adult, so that was his last day there, basically. At that time (I dont know if it changed) CEDU was not like WWASPS in terms of lying to kids telling them that their parents had gotten extended custody, or getting the parents to not take their kid back, so he/she had nowhere to go after splitting. If you were 18 or older, you could physically leave the campus without fear that they would come after you. As far as I know, anyway.
