You guys are talking in small numbers about Hyde not graduating us. This is from long ago. Now the numbers are very large.
Hyde now gets rid of lots of kids during the school year for many bogus reasons. Parents not participating, kids not bowing down, yada yada. Then of course towards the end of the year Hyde goes over in their minds how many of the sucker parents would pay another $40,000 to get their kid a diploma. They make up the usual, "joe blow has not lived up to the character part of the program." They have ruined many a family and many a kid by this.
Hyde's leaders can pull the wool over our parents for the rest of their lives, but I take great enjoyment out of knowing that the majority of Hydes leaders are nothing but loosers themselves. Doesn't matter how many years they are there, they are still talkin bout the same shit that happened in their lives 30 years ago. LOOSERS!!!
30 years ago the place was really for want of a better phrase "a real mind fuck" So many of the kids were down with the program it was like living in east Germany with the stazi.
Judging from the bits and pieces from more recent years and from talking to people from the late seventies it was never that intense again. I think that is why so many people from that era, that were with the program, are still involved: it was the most compelling experiences of their lives. That is why thirty years on people like me are willing to spend time commenting on it. The nearest thing in fiction I can compare it to was a British TV show called "The Prisoner"
One of the things that was used a the razor to cleave the good from the not worthy was belief in a thing called "National Commitment" which was nothing less that the over throw of the US educational system. If you did not believe in it you were not worthy. In retrospect the folks that were willing to say it was a bunch of crap were the ones with character.
The whole thing is like a dirty family secret. No one I have ever run into from back then was willing to talk about it because it was so preposterous that they sat there and bought into it. It would be like going to a family reunion and talking about the time Uncle Billy was caught in the barn standing in a wheelbarrow outtin' the wood to a cow.
I am not sure how wide a net you are throwing when you use the term "Loser" Some of those folk are basically good people. For example Rob is a good guy. I am glad he got a job at a normal school.