http://www.kemper1844.org/cgi-bin/anybo ... yVz-aO-hKzPosted by: mikem ®
08/31/2004, 17:25:31
I attended Kemper for a couple of years in the early 80s. Hazing was quite rampant in many forms. Most involved r*at F***ing activities such as excessive pushups, little-red-chair (or something like that). Lots of verbal abuse. Unfortunately, the brunt of these punishments were dispensed to the weakest. Outright hitting was rare, and was normally not done in public, but it was done. Mostly oldboys used the tried-and-true method of punishing the whole for the mistake of the individual. This had the desired result of newboy beating newboy, rather than an oldboy having to resort to such undesired activity.
One event that seems to stand out somehow was the commandant's parcipitation. I forget the catalyst, but I recall standing at attention with the rest of the newboy class in the big conference hall for hours. I'd expect this from a kid, but this guy was a member of faculty. What a nut-case.
And what about bull-ring? C'mon. That is pretty much school-sanctioned abuse. Hours and hours of marching in a damn circle. I think most of those kids would have been much better off with some toughly-regimented study hall.. and would have probably disliked it even more! In any case, it doesn't seem that the school cared about these happenings. No wonder it's closed. It's a shame that a school with such a fine history deteriorated into a prison.
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Posted by: branson ®
09/03/2004, 13:16:16
Lemme tell ya...
What a great way to experience childhood. Verbal abuse, humiliation, getting punched, kicked, spit on, kicked in the balls, blanket parties... it goes on and on.
No, I didn't go through all the above mentioned, but I saw it on a day-to-day basis inflicted on my peers. (I remember someone (Matt Rich?) getting kicked in the nutz so hard they swole up to the size of baseballs!) I didn't think much about it while I was a cadet, but now I see it for what it really is: a dicked up school, corrupt traditions, irresponsible staff, and greed.
How many of you would gladly send your children somewhere to have the shit kicked out of them? Would you really? How about your business investments...would you invest (and expect a return) out of a company run in the Kemper fashion? Serious change needs to be looked at if the school is to re-open and remain financially viable and clear of lawsuits.
Ian Branson '96
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Posted by: Crabs ®
10/28/2004, 00:05:40
Hazing was really bad the part of the school year and summer i was in kemper. There were countless nights where the Buddy F+ck system really kicked in. That was in 99-00. Kemper sure got the best of most of us although going there taught me more bad traits then i once knew it really did help me get on my feet now i am in college doing well. Do you happen to have any good storys of hazing or any good horror stories of lil boy kemper or of that lake there? I was there in the summer that one kid, although i forgot many of the names of people, who was hazed after gettin caught by an old boy for using the old boy stall and later that night a cop was at the house and the kid was in the hospital. Its memories like those that keep me up at night sometimes still today. IF anyone knows that story let me know and I love talking about old stories that i may have convinced my self to forget
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Posted by: Bill Barber ®
05/11/2003, 22:30:14
I was dumbfounded to say the least when I learned that Kemper had closed. I have such fond memories of the place as do so many of you. I still remember my laundry number, it was 365. That was 43 years ago. Do you remember when they used to switch from AC to DC power at night? For a few seconds all the lights would go out. A great time for the Old Boys to pay a visit to your room for a little punishment. I remember my roomy screwed up during Sunday parade and when the lights went out poor Corey had a visit. Not really sure what they did to him; it wasn't too bad as I recall, probably a tongue lashing and a bent arm of so. It had to be fast as I recall, because the power was only out for about 15-20 seconds. Hazing then was very common and of course accepted. Guys being stuffed in laundry bags and hung out the second story window. I was falsely accused of "stealing" a Playboy magazine from an Old Boy; they first did the cigarette torture on me and then I think they pushed my head under the water in the toilet bowl. I survived as an eighth grader. Got caught smoking and had to march on Saturday and missed one of our football games; in fact I might have been booted off the team but don't think so as I still have my letter sweater. Remember the shoe polishing stuff we used? it was called Miracle Cloth; something like that. We didn't have the patent leather shoes but REAL leather and could we put a shine on those shoes. And then, remember how we removed the build up of polish.......lighter fluid. But you had to be careful or you would burn the leather. A grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the canteen was 15 cents. Oh my were they good. I remember getting caught for flipping butter on the ceiling of the dining room DURING DINNER. You could put the pad of butter onto your cloth napkin and stretch the napkin and the butter would fly. Not sure how I was disciplined. Remember how we would get extra food during dinner? We would actually put money into I believe it was the roll basket or something and pay the waiter to give us extra helpings. We got caught cheating on an Algebra exam; I don't think the instructor told on us otherwise we probably would have been booted out of school. Anyway, we snuck into the classroom (when I'm not sure as you could not roam around schools grounds on your own), got a copy of the test (this is awful) and we all got A's on the exam. Well, our teacher said: "Gentleman, I would like for you to take the exam again." Which we did and probably didn't do as well. Oh, and I was asked to escort Colonel Kralovek's (did I get the spelling right) daughter to a dance one year. Not sure why I was picked but it was sort of an honor as I recall. Always wondered what happened to Major Timberlake. He was really a cool guy as was General Cleland. Very distinguished. The student Corps Commander was named Richardson as I recall; sort of short. And standing next to him during formation were I think two cadets who were twins. Does anyone remember their names? Remember Trujillo? He actually had a bodyguard and was in our company ("A"). The bodyguard used to sit out in front of his room. This was of course before his father was assasinated. Well, this is getting too long. It would be fun to hear from others. One other note before I hang up here: I was very surprised to learn that since I was at Kemper there have been 11 other presidents since General Cleland's tenure from 1957-59. Very difficult in my opinion to run a top-notch military school with a turnover this high.
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Dear, Bill
Now that?s one hell of a paragraph!
I too remember my laundry number, 19 and it?s been forty-two years. I also remember the number on my trusty nine point five one pound, air cooled, clip fed semi-automatic shoulder weapon. But what the hell! (I wonder what ever happened to ol' 194799? Or how about the four or five hundred other vintage de-pinned Garands, where?d they go?)
So your roommate Corey got his arm bent during the nightly hazing in the dark AC to DC interlude. He was not alone. The Boonville Edison Company was itself dark by the time I started Kemper in ?59, so there was no longer the nightly blackout and switch, however, the traditional evening hazing festivities continued as before. (Tradition! Tradition!) The methodology and timing didn?t change much, the cigarette torture, the little red chair, hitting a wicked, dunkin? the crapper, and many more that we have come to know and love ?lo these many moon. Since the lights didn?t go out, the Old Boys organized ?Rat F#*&s? after study hours and before taps. Tell you what you ought ?ta do; look up your old roommate Corey. (It?s not too difficult on the internet.) Talk about the times you had back in the day. Ask if he remembers the hazing when the lights went out. I?ll bet he does! I?ll also bet that he doesn?t remember it as benignly as you do. Ask him if he considered sending his children to Kemper.
My best guess as to the name of the handsome young twin cadets who stood side by each next to Col Richardson were the Melges brothers, known to we in the Latin Club as the Melgi. I was a New Boy the year after you graduated and the Melgi were upper classmen Old Boys.
Eleven headmasters in forty-three years does seem a lot considering that continuity is important for an educational institution; so too is change and introducing the best of contemporary methods and thought. The latter is especially central for success in academic organizations. Kemper was so hide and tradition bound that it was unable to change in any meaningful way to meet the needs of most prospective students. The headmaster turnover was high for many reasons, among them for certain was that any attempt to integrate the best of the contemporary was met with scorn and dismissal; and there were a few nincompoops in there too.
Kemper was not a top notch school when I attended. It was a place for hard cases, incorrigibles, and discarded children of wealthy middle aged parents. All cadets were not in that category, but enough were to make the place tough. Tough does not help once a cadet gets into a university.
Bill Richardson (Yeah, the guy standing betwixt the Melgi.) is making a brave attempt to resurrect Kemper from the bankrupt ashes. If he has the moxie and the money he might succeed. Presently he needs all the help he can get. If you have spare money, send it. Spare time? Donate some for restoration. Bricks and mortar? Ship it. Got a carload of Kiwi polish and Miracloth? Sell it on eBay. Spare equipment? How about a secure algebra test printer.
Dan Staffin
old Old Boy, KMS 1959 ? ?61
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Hazing! Ah yes! Hazing.
I attended Kemper 1959 ? 1961. Back then Kemper had a reputation as a school for the most incorrigible boys. Hazing was de rigueur a part of the regimen of negative reinforcement that was purportedly designed to whip new boy cadets into military shape and academic excellence. Hazing was a traditional part of the program that was left up to the young experienced old boy cadets to perform.
The adults at Kemper certainly had to have known about it; who, what when & where. There was a resident instructor on each floor of the barracks. Each year I was there about ten new boys ran away from the place after the hazing became intolerable. There were also a few parental rescues during which parents would arrive and take their kid home on the spot.
The headmaster attempted to put a stop to hazing, but he was defeated by the cadets who simply turned up the heat on any cadet who snitched, ?till the kid either shut up or ran away. And of course, the adult residents never saw anything.
The adults were nowhere to be seen when the heat was on. There were late night on the halls hazing sessions called ?Rat F*#ks? during which one or more miscreant new boys were hazed with mini torts called ?Hit Ten!?, ?Hit a Wicked!?, ?Hearts?, ?Suck It up!?, ?The Little Red Chair?, and many more variations of painful pranks either handed down from upperclassmen, or told to those in the encore club by parents.
There were also private hazing sessions held in new boy?s rooms. These sessions were usually longer and the torts were more elaborate with fancy names like ?The Iron Cross?, ?Pants Afire, Hearts Afire?, ?Kiss the Bolt?, and a few more, the names of which I have lost across the decades. There was even one that was supposed to be a positive reinforcement, though it was invented after I left Kemper, called ?Signed and Crossed.? (Did any of the Jewish or Moslem cadets get ?Crossed? Were they excused or excluded? Or as when I was there, simply hazed and harassed?)
The fellow who responded somewhere down in the woodpile was honored to have his blood wings pinned to his bare chest. However, the ceremony occurred well after his formative years, and had he declined the informal, barracks ceremony, nothing more that a razzing would have resulted. I do recall seeing a video of a blood wings ceremony during an evening news broadcast. The ensuing furor embarrassed the Army into forbidding the ceremony, or at least driving it deeper underground. At my Kemper, new boys were as young as fourteen. They never were able to decline the honor of a ?Rat F*#&k?, personal service, or any other abuse.
Outright hitting? There was relatively little of that back in the day. I saw it only twice that I recall, though one episode was quite memorable. A new boy classmate was sent to Kemper to get disciplined and straightened out. He was tall, blond, athletic, and made the football team. He couldn?t make the team in public school because he was just a little epileptic and they would not let him play as he suffered from occasional petit mal seizures.
His dad thought that the rigorous military life and strenuous exercise would cure the kid, so it was off to Kemper for high school. A little seizure during a game or practice would hardly be noticed, but during a parade, or just marching in to mess, every stumble or loss of step infuriated our First Sergeant. One morning and one stumble too many and the First Sergeant simply wailed the tar (That?s a polite term for beat the sh#t.) out of the kid right there on the ground on the West side of ?D? barracks.
The question as to whether the hazing had any benefits does remain. I can say that before the end of each of the two years that I attended Kemper all shoes were based to perfection. The blotters were exactly in the middle of the desk. All laundry folded to military precision. All beds were tautly made with military hospital corners and an exactly nine inch fold.
I returned to Kemper?s bones earlier this year to reminisce and reify. When I arrived, to my surprise, what came to the fore was the hazing. I remembered too the comradery, the friends, the activities and the teachers, but first the hazing. Memories that I do not want to have and over the years I put them aside. But some memories emerge after a specific, even long forgotten stimulus. My experience I think is not unique. By comparison I have returned to the public high school from which I graduated and, while the memories are not all sweetness and light, I first remember those days, friends and activities with unreserved warmth. But my bed was often rumpled, my socks and underwear drawer in disarray, and my shoes, suede. (Except once, to win a bet, I have not polished a shoe since May, 1961.)
The legacy of hazing is among the reasons that the cadre of supportive alumnus has become so spare and the corps of cadets so small that Kemper just winked out.
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Posted by: Daniel Staffin
09/02/2004, 00:05:13
"I don't know that hazing really harmed enrollment, because it didn't really get publicized, and it was mostly limited to New Boys. And if a New Boy lasts the year, he's more often than not going to want to return so he can be an Old Boy."
That's what you wrote and I agree. Hazing was not advertized in the catalog, nor was it mentioned to the parents during the sales pitch. And it was almost exclusively new boys who got hazed. Also I quite agree that many new boys returned as old boys in part in order to get even via the next crop of new boys.
However, when the school needed help from the alumni, too many had hazing memories of the place that they just did not want to have. They simply declined to help and the group of people who were willing to help were simply too small to qeep the place open.
Years ago, when I called my classmates, my fellow old boys, and asked if they had considered sending their kids to Kemper, the most common answer that I received was "God no." or "Hell no." Hazing wasn't the sole reason, but it was always among the several.
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?It's a shame that a school with such a fine history deteriorated into a prison.?
Mikem
A shame, yes! Deteriorated into? No, Kemper always was a detention school. Walking area was simply detention for the already detained. The model was nineteenth century British boy?s school. When we attended, a dollop of mid-twentieth century military style and society was superimposed, but it was still a trip into the nineteenth century.
I didn?t think of my years at Kemper as a detention until my early twenties. After I left Kemper in 1961 I thought little about the place or my experiences there. I reminisced during the summer before I returned to public high school. Then again just three times while I was in college. First as I signed up for ROTC. Again, I was reminded of our old school early in the semester during an ROTC drill when I intervened to stop a hazing session. And lastly, I thought of Kemper when I received a passing grade from my Professor of Military Science after the open, public, physical intervention.
I next ruminated about Kemper when I was twenty-four and working for a regional airline. My captain had received two years of his secondary education courtesy of the state?s Juvenile Detention System. The residents were controlled via a system called ?Dukeing.? My captain was a Duke (Kind of like a company commander) after his first year and the Duke of Dukes (Corps commander) when he departed after his second year.
There was plenty of hazing. of course. The older guys hazed the younger. The old boys, the new boys, the strong lorded it over the weak.
Sound familiar? There were other similarities too.
There is a story behind each of the preceding paragraphs but this forum is not suitable to the long form.
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Posted by: Daniel Staffin
09/08/2004, 03:37:44
Sounds like assault to me too. It was the same in my day. It was the same before my day. It was the style of a tough military school. It still is.
Sounds like you had an episode or two yourself. Eye burns? Got kids? What would you do if your kids came home from school with corneal burns and abrasions resulting from a bunch of bullies throwing chemicals at your kids? Think about it.
The new boy hazing was not constructive criticism. The stuff that the old boys dispensed for cause was straight ahead negative reinforcement. It?s a concept that you can get introduced to, in an academic way, at your local institution of higher learning; Psychology 101. Most institutions of secondary learning avoid negative reinforcement except in the mildest way, because of the unpredictable destructive behaviors that often emerge long after the reinforcing event.
So you liked it when you were young and could do a lot of pushups. Well, you can reify. To do it again, hit ten right now! I?ll text message you once or twice a day, or maybe more frequently, like when you?re on the way to the grocery and order you to hit ten, till you?re back in trim. What the hell, it?ll only take a few weeks. Your friends and neighbors will get a kick out of it.
Didn?t like pushups that much, did you? You won?t drop a give me ten at a whim? But there was something back then that you did like. We all liked it. We were young.
Pushups, bracing, the little red chair weren?t all that bad, but what was it that we accomplished by doing those things? Yes you learned from your mistakes. We all learned from our mistakes, but I don?t recall learning much from hitting a wicked, or ten. In my day (1959 ? ?61) physical abuse was common, the norm. Long after I left Kemper I doubted my memories of the place. I called up several of my classmates to see if they remembered as I did. They remembered as did I; it was a tough, abusive experience.
My first year?s commandant was one Col George Graeb, a grey, over-the-hill old man. His nickname was ?the Commode?, or just ?shovelhead.? My second year it was the august Maj Tedsan S. Timberlake. His nickname was Major Timberlake. Enthusiastic and outspoken, a good leader, he had others do his bidding. Whatever he wanted to happen, happened. I interviewed Ted when he was an old-old man living in retirement in Pensacola, Florida. He may still live down there, but he?d be as old as Methuselah by now. He told me how he felt when he had to speak to the parents of cadets in his charge. It was interesting.
What was your ?nutcase? commandant?s nickname? What made him a nutcase?
If the Friends of Kemper or anyone else assembles the resources to resurrect our old high school, I hope that the hazing and other abusive traditions do not get resurrected too.
Dan Staffin
old, Old Boy KMS 1959 - '61
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Posted by: GNieto ®
02/01/2005, 21:41:38
My dad was in Kemper during 64 - 67 his opinion was that my years was a disneyland in comparrison. I believe every generation had it worse than the years after. But the kids these days have no clue as to what real leadership is. I work for an academy right now and have seen many cases of taking hazing or punishment way to far and doing things to new boys that you wouldn't do to an animal. When i was a new boy my cadre dealt with us fairly, but if we ever talked back or caused problems - well you better watch out. Fear is a great motivator
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Posted by: Ben Schwarz ®
10/29/2004, 14:55:52
I was thier pryor to the 90-91 year and in charlie company. I remmember an incendent were a company commander and a bunch of hawaiins beat up an old boy cadet in the middle of the night. We all had to testify to the facts of what happen that night. So hazing was still going on in full force.
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Posted by: Adam Herman
08/30/2004, 06:23:56
From what I was told at the time, the years from about 1988-1990, the hazing just became hazing for the sake of hazing, with no point behind it other than to abuse New Boys. It wasn't even all that creative, like the stuff you describe. Just straight out beatings or excessive PT. Lots of hospitalizations, one incident resulted in almost a dozen New boys going to the hospital for injuries.
I guess it was that sheer excess that resulted in a major crackdown just as I arrived. We always got picked on verbally because we didn't go through what New Boys before us went through. But the chain of command still had plenty of discplinary levers to pull, and we were just as disciplined as anybody else. What's even more interesting was that as soon as those tortured New Boys became Old Boys they just totally let themselves go. No discipline, crappy uniforms, dirty rooms.
It seemed that all that mattered to some of them was that they were Old Boys. They didn't earn it through anything they DID, they earned it simply by taking the hazing. Standard of Honor violations were endemic, yet no one ever got it taken away.
But the officers and NCOs were something special. Honorable, great teachers and mentors. They commanded respect by their very presence and the way they carried themselves. They didn't need to hit us, one word or look from them was enough to make us snap to and do whatever they told us with all possible speed. Capt. Metzger, 1st Sgt. Mammano, Lt. Cadwell, Lt. Claybaugh, Sgt, Hebert, and especially Sgt. MacFarlin and Sgt. Kelley, outstanding squad leaders. I just didn't have much use for most of the Old Boys who were privates, but I guess that's why they were privates.
Seems like the level of hazing really waxed and waned over the years.
The other thing I never got was the whole ethics and logic behing narcing. Okay, you get hit, you're not supposed to tell anyone. If you're a New Boy. But at least when I was there, if an Old Boy got hit, he'd tell every Old Boy who would listen. One Old Boy got thrown off the third floor balcony and had to go to the hospital. When asked who did it, he refused to tell anyone, neither faculty nor fellow Old Boys. Capt. Morrell laughed and said that narrowed it down, it obviously wasn't a New Boy because if it was he would have sang like a canary.
I don't know that hazing really harmed enrollment, because it didn't really get publicized, and it was mostly limited to New Boys. And if a New Boy lasts the year, he's more often than not going to want to return so he can be an Old Boy.
Posted by: Laura Williams
09/06/2004, 21:09:04
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It just kills me to hear of some of the things that went on in the 90's. Doesn't sound like hazing, it sounds like criminal assault.
In 82 when I was a new boy and the daughter of the Asst. commandant, I had to put up with some extra "hazing" from some of the old boy females but never from Band Company, which I belonged to. The worst was the night of the Jody party, when we all got out of phase one. I had to stay in the female barracks instead of going down to Band Company. We were all herded together and terrorized and verbally abused for awhile, nothing serious or more than expected, but at the end, they were soaking us down with mud and water from the pond. They placed my sister and I at the end of the line and we had a different bucket of water thrown in our faces. Two girls had put Astringent in the water. My sister wore contacts and came out of it with a ruined pair of contacts. I had to get my eyes washed out and had pretty severe eye burns from it. Hurt for awhile but I lived. But... the kids that did it were disciplined and one of them was expelled. That kind of stuff just wasn't tolerated.
Most of what the hazing was more constructive criticism. A few blanket parties and shower parties for the unwashed. I'm glad I never had one of these but living in close quarters with someone with questionable hygiene made me understand the neccesity of a forced shower and scrubbing.
I also had to walk area, extra cleaning duties, etc. Boring yes, but I usually learned from my mistakes. I thought squaring my meals was kind of stupid when I was a phase one, didn't like bracing much, wish I could do pushups now like I could back then, and absolutely hated sitting in an invisible chair. None of these things physically hurt me though and I believe they were character building. Im sure there were instances of abuse when I was there but they were the exception, not the norm. Now the commandant we had then was a nutcase and he did more physical damage to cadets then the cadets did amongst themselves. He is a whole other topic.
Thanks for starting these topics, I am enjoying reading all the stories.
Laura Spice Williams
82-83
Posted by: Laura Williams
09/11/2004, 18:13:10
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If one of my kids came up with the same injuries I did from my brush with hazing I would probably have done the same thing my Dad did. The one responsible for it was expelled. The others were punished.
My point was that the type of behavior that caused physical injuries wasn't tolerated if they found out about it. I'm not deluded enough to believe that bad things didn't happen there, they happened to me and my parents worked there. Having also gone to other schools besides military schools, I cant think of one that didn't have some sort of hazing or behavior of that kind in it. Kids can be cruel. In fact, I would much rather be told to drop do 10 pushups than have some of the things Ive seen happen in some of the schools I have attended (Being an army brat, I attended 7 different ones all over the country).
The name of the nut case commandant was Sgt. Major Hunt. We have discussed him previously here. Watching him leave after he was canned is one of my fonder memories. In some ways, his tyrannical behavior brought many of us closer together. He hated band company, probably because he didn't have as much control over us as the others. Chief Ignacio did his best to keep him off our backs. He also was very prejudiced against people of different races and thought females had no business being there. Just an all around jerk. He took pleasure out of hurting people, whether with his words or his famous paddle. He was rough enough with his corporal punishment that my Dad, who was also the medic, actually had to tend to some kids afterwards. He drummed several kids out just because they were different. This was a person that had no business around kids. He had a son that went there, he was pretty cool. Thank goodness he didn't take after his dad.
I do agree with you in that if the school gets resurrected, I hope the hazing and abuse stays dead and buried.
