Who remembers the power outage of jan1998?

[Anonymous]

Anyone who would want to sue the school for money or simply add one more solid point towards shutting them down should recall the power outage that lasted two weeks in january of 1998. There were no showers no heat overflowing toilets no warm meals no running water what so ever. This lasted two whole weeks. If that is not neglgence then I don't know what is. Those are just not humane conditions for children to be living in. I knew a kid in my house who had bladder control issues and still did not get to bathe at all for these two weeks. I ccan remember the day before the power came back on, they found a generator that supposedly could power an amusement park but, really could hardly make the sinks and showers drip ice cold water. Not to mention the complete lack of water at the outreach dorms.

[Anonymous]

I definately was there for that. The women of Elan 8 were forced to move there things down to re-enrty dorms after 3 days of living in an unheated building. We slept with 3 or 4 sweaters on, with 2 or 3 blankets, (they sent us soiled comforters from the annex to use, they said just keep our clean comforter between the soiled one and our skin) we had hats and pants and socks piled on and females were still shivering. Sinse there was no power we were all split risks, (who is going to run away into a sub zero blizzard?) so we spent the entire day except for 4 hours laying in our bed piled with clothing. Old food was crusted to the floor since no one was allowed to clean. The toilets were the worst. They were filled to the rim with diarehha, urine, used tampons, blood, you name it.  Some females didn't even poop for a week because they refused to sit on them.  No one washed there hands, faces, teeth, or body for 2 weeks! Every one was greasy and smelled horrible and we were made to lay in our filth for the enitre days in the pitch dark. It was hell literally.  After 2 weeks they let a van drive us to a homeless shelter where we got to take cold showers and then come back to the filthy disgusting houses.  Once down at re-enrty none of the staff knedw how to turn the heat genorator down, this was before our showedrs, so it was about 90 degrees in there and the females rotten bodies were cooking. We still found time however to do encounter groups sitting in a circle on the floor next to eachother. Parents had no way of getting in contact with us.  Once it was over wed had a ton of overflowing toilets, there is no way to describe the smell in the house, dishes that had rotten for days, food crusted on the floor, and soiled comforter, and the most rank dirty laundry you can imagine.  And the staff simply told us to clean the house.

[Anonymous]

I recently recieved a phone call from a local contractor who I have done buisness with over the years. He was called by Elan to evaluate/repair a variety of problems throughout the complex. He could not believe the condition of the facility explaining its run down condition, and comparing it to a shanty town. This was no surprise to me as I have recieved many calls over the years from contractor friends seeking payment for services at Elan, thinking perhaps I had some pull with Joe, which we know is nonsense.

After a brief conversation with my only remaining friend still working at Elan, I learned that the Poland complex need for repair exceeds the value of the property. This coupled with a score of existing liens from suppliers and contractors seeking payment has the Poland property stalled in court. The real estate industry calls this type of property a White Elephant.

This has already effected the resident population as parents who visit expect better conditions for thier 50K. It was trendy to get well in log cabins in the 1970s, but not in the 00s when you market yourself as a private school for college bound kids.

Factor into this the incredibly bad press Elan has absorbed of late, and there you have a real mess.

I expect a slow demise for the Elan School. The gross mismanagment of the facility on a buisiness level has them ankle deep in red ink. I predict that Elan will slowly gear down toward a scheduled date to close. The current owners will liquidate everything and retire. They are at that age, and all of them deserving. Sharon has to be spent from twenty years of running the entire operation and maintaining a relationship with Joe. Jeffrey has upward of thirty years into Elan and is in my opinion one of the few decent directors. Marty was/is the only regional director to have run all facilities at a time when the resident/staff population was at its highest. The program nose dived with him gone in the 80s.

I clearly see the three of them leaving Elan in the next few years, closing the school and selling the property.

Thanks, John

[Anonymous]

I am going to be very upset if this is how Elan will end John.  However reading your post makes a ton of sence. I wish that those people would get what they desrve for the amount they have tortured kids "for fun and profit." It seems though that with the amount of money that school pulls in, and the lack of quality they provide for the students, they would be able to build a larger efficiant house for the kids to live in, perhaps where Elan 7 stands empty now. They are changing into a completely different program from what I have heard.  I left in early 2000 and almost immediately they stopped the ring.  Then they purchased big screen televisions for each house, soon after they stopped having general meetings and VR's and blasts. It seems as if Elan is turning into a totally different place, all of us complain but no one has ever came up with a concrete idea and gotten a lawyer, plus put together some students who witnesses and experienced harsh, horrible, and abusive conditions.  If we got together that place would be shut down in a heart beat, or some staff would be in some serious shit.