Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Facility Question and Answers
Hyde
nimdA:
Let's continue!
How intensive was the day to day supervision of the staff?
Ursus:
Getting back in the swing of things...
--- Quote from: ""TS Waygookin"" ---Describing the residential setting of Hyde in great detail.
Describing the policy and proceedure in regards to the following:
Dining arrangements
Showering
Laundry
Medical Aid
Student Jobs
If any or all of these items can be affected by staff or fellow students please explain how and cite a personal example.
--- End quote ---
Laundry: Not sure if I remember this with utmost accuracy, but I do believe that most of the dorms had a couple of machines. If your dorm did not, you used the machines at one of the other dorms. I am thinking something on the order of 2 washers, 2 dryers per...
Kids generally did their laundry on weekends, there being so little unstructured time during the week. An exception might be if machines were in your building and you could just manage to coordinate being there when they finished, etc., but this would be rare.
Medical Aid, Sports Injuries, etc.: In my time, there was no resident physician, nor regular visits of such. There was a designated doctor the school sent the kids to off campus in town, and to pay him a visit you needed prior approval from the school nurse. You would be transported and accompanied by staff from the school.
I didn't particularly care for this physician, he seemed to have a rather cynical attitude towards us kids. To my knowledge, there was not an option to see a physician of your choice. During my time, the school nurse was employed by Hyde by virtue of her being the wife of one of the faculty members.
There was virtually no medical instruction or education as to the nature of your ailments and/or medications. And there was absolutely nothing forthcoming from the school proper as to sex education and common sense procedure re. disease control. There were periodic outbreaks of some sort (e.g., strep throat) which would run their course multiple times throughout the school body, with several kids being re-infected multiple times. No word from the school nurse, nor the designated physician, nor the school administration as to how to mitigate these kind of incidents.
Perhaps even more disturbing, given the potential longterm consequences, were how sports injuries were dealt with. Sports reigns as king at Hyde, as they consider physical striving and competition to be key to their "character development" program. No argument with me there, but you are treated like a total wuss if you receive an injury that might prevent or temporarily curtail said striving for your personal best. The injury needs to be brought up to your coach, most likely also discussed with your teammates in seminar-like confrontational discussions, and if they do not believe you... Well, you run the risk of not only not receiving medical intervention, but also of having to make reparations of some sort for your "attitude problem," not to mention having to live with that stigma in other areas of school life. A lot of kids are too afraid, or perhaps too brainwashed, to risk that 'till permanent damage has already been done.
During my time there, there was a gal who skied over her thumb somehow. The digit swelled up to twice its normal size and turned bright blue. I saw her with a makeshift split she had constructed herself, the nail being long lost. To my knowledge, she never received medical attention or advice for this. Myself, I suffer to this day from leg injuries that were sustained over the course of a full year of repetitive injury before being lent enough credence. By this time, I had been experiencing significant difficulty just in walking more than six feet. There was another classmate who had had rheumatic fever as a child, with subsequent heart damage, and this classmate's efforts in cross country were always considered "suspect."
And if you had a weight problem on top of everything else, you were really up the creek. Talk about evidence of a major character flaw, ha! Being fat at Hyde is a special hell all its own. Because it is not a question of your having a weight problem, it is a question of your having an attitude problem! You just don't have enough commitment! To say that bulimia/purging was an "issue" at Hyde is a laughable understatement. You learned how to purge at Hyde. Requisite self-image issues are understandably heavily intertwined.
In short, there was no access to impartial third party medical care, at least during my time. Medical care, such as there was, was heavily filtered through a "character development" mindset.
nimdA:
--- Quote ---And if you had a weight problem on top of everything else, you were really up the creek. Talk about evidence of a major character flaw, ha! Being fat at Hyde is a special hell all its own. Because it is not a question of your having a weight problem, it is a question of your having an attitude problem! You just don't have enough commitment! To say that bulimia/purging was an "issue" at Hyde is a laughable understatement. You learned how to purge at Hyde. Requisite self-image issues are understandably heavily intertwined.
--- End quote ---
Was purging brought about by peer pressure?
Ursus:
--- Quote from: ""TS Waygookin"" ---
--- Quote from: ""Ursus"" ---And if you had a weight problem on top of everything else, you were really up the creek. Talk about evidence of a major character flaw, ha! Being fat at Hyde is a special hell all its own. Because it is not a question of your having a weight problem, it is a question of your having an attitude problem! You just don't have enough commitment! To say that bulimia/purging was an "issue" at Hyde is a laughable understatement. You learned how to purge at Hyde. Requisite self-image issues are understandably heavily intertwined.
--- End quote ---
Was purging brought about by peer pressure?
--- End quote ---
Although I am sure that there were some minor peer pressure factors, the incentive to lose weight was primarily school driven. Purging was a desperate means to attempt to comply with Hyde's expectations. If you did not sufficiently comply, punitive measures would be taken (confrontation/discussion with your teammates, extra workouts, possibly even work crew aka 2-4, humiliation/confrontation in Seminar aka Discovery Group, and, in my time, possibly even having to wear a large sign around your neck stating to all your "problem"). Suffice to say that there wouldn't be a single person on campus, including the secretarial and maintainance staff, who would not know of your "issues."
Regular weigh-ins were an integral part of your sports experience at Hyde. I should also say, however, that it is my impression that the school appears to have had a rather spasmodic focus on this issue. Some periods of time were worse than others. Here is a post which I believe describes the mid-70s, although it does seem to describe Hyde's general approach over the years to a tee:
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=13623&start=36
--- Quote from: ""Guest"" ---...I do know, however, that there were other inappropriate male comments made to girls about their bodies in general, and some girls were put on diets arbitarily. Seemed odd to have a male teacher weighing in all these teenage girls. The wrestlers taught the girls how to get their weight down for these weigh-ins by using laxatives. The weight loss was totally unsupervised. The teachers said to lose so many pounds and the girls were expected to do it with no guidance. They had to eat the same high starch food in the dining room as everyone else and weigh in once a week. After weighing in on a weekend morning, they headed to the dining room for french toast or pancakes with lots of syrup. Hyde was really good at teaching the binge-purge cycle.
--- End quote ---
Here is another post from someone about another particularly pernicious period:
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=20343&start=158
--- Quote from: ""Guest"" ---OK another one...late 70s early 80s. The school and schools in general are worried about overweight kids. So, body fat measurements are recommended as a way to determine total body fat percent.
A teacher, coach and dad of one of my female classmates. Has all the girls in the school strip for him one at a time for the body fat measurements. We boys were allowed to keep shorts on. The rationale the teacher came up with was the elastic bands of the bras and panties would throw off the test results. The headmasters daughter at the time (not a gauld), protested and the nude teen show came to a halt. She was a 8th or 9th grader and had some common sence. The brainwashing had not set in on her. The "leadership senior" girls donned their birthday suits with out a second thought.
I think this speaks reams to the hyde process...It taught these girl to do as your told, we know best, don't question the process to the point of stripping butt *ss naked in front of this sadly disturbed man. Now that is character before acheivement!!!!!
--- End quote ---
As to current focus, it is my general impression that the same pressures, as well as the same lack of professional approach, remain.
nimdA:
That just made my brain hurt.
So it wasn't an official policy, but the amount of pressure to shape up in body and attitude was so intense that purging became a reasonable method?
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