I was just thinking about this, and I'm only posting it merely because I have always found it so interesting. I'm not sure if this was the case in Elan, but in Daytop, upon being signed in, you were no longer a ctizen of whatever state you lived you in, but were now a ctizen of the Daytop Village, which resided as a seperate entity from the state, and in some ways was outside of jurisdiction. The laws that you had to follow as a resident were the laws of the program, one of those laws, which were outside the program, you must observe the laws of any state down to the key, even the most minor ones.
It really was interesting.. like for example, inside of the Daytop building, gambling was legal, in spite of the fact that in New York, where the building resided it is illegal. You could gamble all you wanted in that place, legally. Also, we got a few smoke breaks a day, outside the building, long after a law had been passed, that it was illegal for students to smoke on any type of sholl grounds. The only thing that the program really had to worry about was it's sponsors, 'cause if they dissapproved, they were out of funding. I remember that even te schooling was not up to NY state standards. I finally got out of ninth grade by taking a bunch of RCT's that I had already taken in like 7th garde. I had already taken all the regents for the subjects, which they were giving me RCT's ( practice regents.)
They, literally had their own little government, however the hell they worked that out, and they only had to answer to their sponsprs for the sake of funding. I remember that the sponsor of Daytop, when I was there was something with the word "Rainbow" in it.
It's kind of amazing to me that they needed actualy sponsors for funding. For each kid that went there, the school district supplied money for transportation, and the school district supplied other money as well. Also, the parent's op the children had to pay. I know my father had to pay some in cash, and some in insurance, if I remember correctly, and in addition to that, the government funded them according to how many kids were there at each time, in numerous ways.
.. and it's not like they needed janitors, just a few counselors..
with the residents there, as trained cleaning machines, and all
and they didn't invest in a nurse or anything like that..
Well, who knows?
Paul St. John
