Author Topic: Hyde  (Read 30136 times)

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Offline nimdA

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« Reply #30 on: July 15, 2007, 10:54:50 AM »
Let's continue!

How intensive was the day to day supervision of the staff?
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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Offline Ursus

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« Reply #31 on: July 25, 2007, 11:24:45 AM »
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.


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.
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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Offline nimdA

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« Reply #32 on: July 25, 2007, 09:07:18 PM »
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.


Was purging brought about by peer pressure?
« Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
am the metal pig.

Offline Ursus

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« Reply #33 on: July 26, 2007, 12:22:39 AM »
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.

Was purging brought about by peer pressure?

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.

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!!!!!


As to current focus, it is my general impression that the same pressures, as well as the same lack of professional approach, remain.
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Offline nimdA

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« Reply #34 on: July 26, 2007, 10:27:40 AM »
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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Offline Ursus

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« Reply #35 on: July 28, 2007, 10:50:56 AM »
Quote from: ""TS Waygookin""
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?


You got it.  Note that these purging methods were in use quite some time ago, long before this issue became more mainstream to the point it is now.

Wish there was some more input from someone more recent, to confirm how it is now.  I am basing my suppositions on the current state of affairs on personal information from people two, three years ago, but that is hardly the same thing as them chiming in with the verdict themselves.

Hyde has a lot of these so-called non-official policies.  I am guessing it enables them to fine-tune the "character education" on an as-need basis...
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Offline Ursus

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« Reply #36 on: July 28, 2007, 11:06:43 AM »
Student Jobs:  Everyone had a student job.  These would be things like cleaning your dorm's bathroom, or cleaning up the congregating area in your dorm (if there was one), etc.  Basically something that could be done in about half an hour, scheduled to take place before or after room inspection in the morning, if I recall correctly.  These jobs were to be done each day.  The lineup would rotate.

More responsible students had jobs with less structure and less oversight; they might be assigned a job that was less intense, but took longer, e.g., be monitor for study hall.

Students on scholarships had additional, more extensive, jobs.  Typically something like pots and pans work for the kitchen chef.

Work Crew, aka 2-4:  If you were on work-crew, you usually were exempt from your student job, as it would have enabled more fraternization with your fellow students than the school deemed appropriate.  Part of the reason you were on work-crew was for you to think, in isolation, of whatever it was that you did that was so bad.  Same comment, of course, about wilderness and outpost, when you would be completely off-campus altogether.

Of course, if you were on work-crew aka 2-4, you would be doing a student job, of sorts!  You might be doing landscaping work on the school grounds, or other similarly beneficial labor...  During my time this work was typically more involved and yet more pointless:  digging 6x6 pits and filling them up again.  The distance you had to move the dirt increased with the magnitude or number of your transgressions.

Here is a quote from Joe Gauld's own book, Character First:  The Hyde School Difference (ICS Press, 1993), pp78-79:
    The desystemization process is highly effective, even in the case of kids who have been notorious troublemakers in the past, like Jim.  After Jim was expelled from his high school for repeatedly cutting classes and breaking the school's no-smoking rule, his mother read an editorial about Hyde School.  After an interview Jim was given a trial in our summer program and underwent desystemization.

    A year later we wrote his parents:  "We believe Jim will not only continue to grow at Hyde but will also be an asset to the community...  Jim is well on his way to becoming a young man of conscience and character."

    How could a problem student like Jim make such a transformation in just a year?  Jim's mother helps to explain, in a letter she wrote to her local newspaper about her son's summer school experience at Hyde.

      Last spring you wrote an editorial about Hyde School... About this time my son was expelled from G. High School...  His father took him for the required interview, and both made a commitment to Hyde.*

      During the eight weeks that followed, weekly calls were made home:  "Get me out of here, these kids rat on each other"; "Our canoe was swamped by a wave, and my tennis shoes are at the bottom of the ocean"; "We nearly starved on the ocean course in the dory" (ate all their provisions too soon and had only apples left the last day); then there were the pits dug "to bury the old image in" (my son's math class figured he dug enough dirt to cover an acre), not to mention work crews, being a shadow (having to constantly follow around some more responsible student), and what the kids termed the worst punishment, banishing a student to live by himself until he could prove he was ready to join the group again.

      All of these experiences brought this group of 120 kids to the realization Hyde had a lot to offer them.  They found they could get along without cigarettes, lose weight or a bad image, overcome shyness, etc.  A more confident, thoughtful, happy group emerged, visibly proud of their accomplishments.

      My son had no intention of returning to Hyde in the fall and was one of the last to decide to go back...  He confided he was not sure he hadn't been brainwashed.  Finally, he said he thought Hyde was like Listerine:  you hate it, but you know you need it.
    *


Addendum:  See also the following re. ICS Press:
http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=21774
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Offline nimdA

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« Reply #37 on: July 28, 2007, 08:08:30 PM »
Describe more of these unofficial policies regarding character education.
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Offline Che Gookin

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« Reply #38 on: September 27, 2007, 10:47:23 AM »
Where are we with this interview?
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Offline Ursus

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« Reply #39 on: October 29, 2007, 07:54:45 PM »
Okay, I'm trying to get back into the swing of things here... Sorry, folks, got distracted with some other stuff.

This in from a recent grad, re. some details pertinent to allowable communications with your loved one stuck at Hyde.  I have taken the liberty to alter some phraseology to protect said person's identity, otherwise the info, and the words for the most part, are theirs:
    "...the students at hyde are assigned e-mail adresses, most of the time they are the first initial+last name at hyde.edu...  For the most part e-mails are safe as long as they don't have profanity in them, then they are screened.  Sending "snail mail" is the safest way, although they have confiscated mail of students who are in constant trouble.  Also, if you are on '2-4,' their punishment for breaking ethics, you cannot receive any kind of mail."[/list]
    « Last Edit: December 31, 1969, 07:00:00 PM by Guest »
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    Offline Che Gookin

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    « Reply #40 on: October 30, 2007, 02:00:04 AM »
    Are the rest of their internet activities monitored?
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    Offline Ursus

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    « Reply #41 on: October 30, 2007, 10:12:04 AM »
    Quote from: ""Che Gookin""
    Are the rest of their internet activities monitored?

    Well, take a look at what they did to this poor gal earlier this year (this was posted in June):
      I honestly dount it will be 30-40%. Although i am one of those people who started the year and did not finish. My mother is now out 40,000. They also refused to give me money/clothing/cellphone back to me unless i removed what i wrote about hyde on this website. All i did was say the dean is a dick its not like i broke the lying ethic i mean hey come on I TOLD THE TRUTH!
      http://wwf.fornits.com/viewtopic.php?t=21094&start=9[/list]Read onwards in the above noted thread for speculation as to methodology.  Clearly, current Hyde students should not post on fornits from campus using the Hyde server without using an anonymizing proxy, preferably one that re-sizes data packets.  Even then, I suspect Hyde's proxy (using the https address, for tracking all incoming and outgoing traffic) may still give them enough data to nail someone for posting based on data packet sizes and time stamps, even if they can't prove it.  I'm not a 100% sure about the tech aspects of that, but it's something along those lines.
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      Offline Anonymous

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      « Reply #42 on: October 30, 2007, 11:41:55 AM »
      the chinese have the same problem. I think they have some website they can use to access sites outside of the country without getting caught.
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      Offline Ursus

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      « Reply #43 on: October 30, 2007, 11:48:41 AM »
      Quote from: ""Guest""
      the chinese have the same problem. I think they have some website they can use to access sites outside of the country without getting caught.

      There are certain word filters used, too, I'm sure.  Ergo screening the Hyde students' mail if they use profanity.

      Kinda like what happens to you if you use the word "Tibet" in China, ha haa!!
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      Offline Anonymous

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      « Reply #44 on: October 30, 2007, 11:52:24 AM »
      guess someone needs to set up some sort of mirror site or something.
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