Will answer questions about Summit Nyack

[WildAndrogynous]

So was it your choice to go to Summit?

My dad threatened to kick me out if I didn't get involved with some school, and due to certain events in my past, I was supremely ill-equipped for education in a less specialized setting. An administrator at the previous school I was enrolled in recommended it along with a handful of other places.

Do you think it turned out well for you?

Others?

When did you get out?


.... and thanks for answering these questions.

Summit was a mixed experience for me. On one hand, I acquired social and academic skills that I had never had the chance to obtain in the decade prior - made a few close friends, too.
On the other hand, no matter how good Summit is compared to other residential programs... it's still a grimy-ass, second-rate boarding school packed to the gills with (severely) pathological kids. With a select few exceptions, most of the other students were downright undesirable to be around due to the ways in which their own issues manifested. In addition, as someone who identifies as transgendered, I knew I couldn't safely express my gender identity in a place filled with ignorance and idiocy. The stresses of daily life at Summit started taking a heavy physical and emotional toll on me, so I eventually decided to stop beating the idiomatic dead horse and leave.

I've seen Summit's program transform substance-addled layabouts into straight-laced model students, and the severely mentally disabled into productive members of society... as well as vice versa. The vagaries of peer influence, staff influence, and structure can oftentimes make or break a student there.

I left in late February, but remained officially enrolled until early April.

[WildAndrogynous]

I'm not claiming Summit is fantastic by any stretch of the imagination; I could list the multitude of fucked-up things about the place for you too.

What might some of those things be?

Widespread bullying and abusive cliques
General staff apathy until it's quite literally too late to change/improve a given situation
Unhealthy food choices with almost nothing else available
Inadequate ventilation in some rooms
Kleptomaniacs for housekeeping staff
The ubiquity of secondhand smoke and the unwillingness of the staff to enforce what regulations are already in place
Teachers who would rather play Farmville and hand out worksheets than actually teach
Teachers who treat all students as equals - equally mentally disabled, that is
Improperly maintained bathrooms and shower facilities
Frequent bedbug infestations
Downright abusive staff members in one of the girls' dorms
The way that staff can and do abuse the "one-to-one" system

I could go on, but it's 2 AM and my brain isn't really functioning too well.

[Free Will]

Ok, but the key word there is influence.  Can you explain peer resistance and the others you mentioned?  I'm trying to understand the underlying structure of the program.  If it's voluntary, i'm personally cool with it, as long as people know what they're getting into.  If it's 12 step based?  If so, do they explain to people prior to "treatment" that it's a calvinistic religion that preaches a deterministic philosophy that denies the existence of free will?  What i'm getting at is: is there informed consent?  Is the program accurately marketed?  Are people being told not just that they are going to be "cured", but also how?  Once in the program, can people decline to participate in activities they feel uncomfortable with without consequence or does release require cooperation?

[WildAndrogynous]

Ok, but the key word there is influence.  Can you explain peer resistance and the others you mentioned?  I'm trying to understand the underlying structure of the program.  If it's voluntary, i'm personally cool with it, as long as people know what they're getting into.  If it's 12 step based?  If so, do they explain to people prior to "treatment" that it's a calvinistic religion that preaches a deterministic philosophy that denies the existence of free will?  What i'm getting at is: is there informed consent?  Is the program accurately marketed?  Are people being told not just that they are going to be "cured", but also how?  Once in the program, can people decline to participate in activities they feel uncomfortable with without consequence or does release require cooperation?

When I say "peer influence", I'm referring to the physical lumping together of the sane with the insane and the addicted with the clean that goes on there. Summit is truly a high school for delinquents in the sense that if you're not a "delinquent" when you arrive, you'll probably be one by the time you graduate or leave due to negative peer influence and staff apathy.

The best way I can describe the school's underlying structure is as a normal boarding school with a very non-"normal" student body, with inconsistent and often absent supports for these kids' problems.

The program there has nothing to do with any 12-step philosophy, although a staff member once told me that interested students were vanned into town for AA meetings in the past. The amount of informed consent kids are given before agreeing to be sent off usually depends on the parents, to be quite honest.

Although any student can (hypothetically) choose to leave and never return at any time, release on the school's terms (meaning graduation or transfer back to district) usually requires intense academic and personal effort in order to make feasible. Quite obviously, students with poor/missing grades and those with worse-than-average behavioral records (i.e. AWOLs, drug incidents, fights) are the least likely to leave legitimately.