Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > CEDU / Brown Schools and derivatives / clones
Staff you Hate - please comment
try another castle:
--- Quote from: "Che Gookin" ---Do any of you all ever recall seeing Lon Foolsbury out at RMA? I know the horsefucker worked at RMA as an admission director of some sorts at some point.
--- End quote ---
I dont ever remember seeing him, and he was indeed working admissions during my tenure.
First off, I don't even recall where the admissions office even was when I first got there, but eventually, they moved into emmerson, once it was built. I have no idea who any of those people were, we barely exchanged one word to each other. They were like ants, working diligently underneath a house or something, without the owners even knowing there is some series insect labor going on below them.
Maybe that was my own experience, though. Maybe other students had more contact with them, such as leadership.
The only extensive contact I had with anyone in that place was dealing with transcripts and graduation, and by extensive, I mean more than two sentences. Nobody went through propheets, nobody sat in on raps. If there were a few individuals, they were the exception, and I don't remember them. We rarely, if ever, got admin people over in our sector.
The one admin person I recall who crossed the lines and jumped into RMA therapy was the woman in charge of admittance (as opposed to admissions), Cydniey. She was the one who basically orchestrated your admittance process, such as the paperwork, strip search, haircut (if needed). So in some ways, she was admin, in others, she was staff. If you were staff, you went through the program, because you were working with the kids. She seemed to be a nice enough woman, but I had such a negative association with her, I didn't like her much. I was in a few exercises with her in raps/workshop-type things, and it sure seemed as if the ideology had just bitchslapped her. She definitely appeared to be dealing with the WTF part of the process. Yeah, you stupid bitch, what do you think you had been preparing us for? Therapy?
No idea what happened to her. I don't even remember if she was still around when I graduated. I believe so...
RMA Survivor:
I definitely remember similar experiences where "staff" who were not part of the program yet but really just hired help for other things suddenly being in a rap or propheet and having that WTF!!!?? reaction on their faces.
Chuck Selent was one of them. He was part of my Summit or I and Me workshop, yet I don't think he had ever been in any other propheet prior, maybe a couple of raps. He was just then becoming more of a full-fledged staff member and all I remember was him being very resistant to the opening of the workshop where they tell you that you have to obey all of the rules then go on to suggest there will be violence. That part where they say there will be No Violence, unless otherwise directed... He had a real problem with that one. But he had also just started on some sort of herbal supplement regimen where you had to take these pills or whatever every day, cost him a thousand dollars or something and when they told him he couldn't take them during the workshop he nearly walked out and quit his job.
H eventually backed down, but he looked shell-shocked from that point onward. I don't remember him doing much while in there. He contributed little, said little, and just looked like he had woken up in an insane asylum and wasn't quite sure how he had gotten there.
I do remember Lon Woodbury. He's still a huge part of the system. He is the one who interacts with parents and therapists on the outside and gets people to send their teens to places. He's deep, deep, deep in to it all. Very corrupt. But while I was there in '84-'86 he was on campus, had an office in that underground lair beneath the girls dorms and the library. He dressed like a leprechaun in a green tweed coat, corduroy pants and he smoked a pipe all the time. A very odd individual. But he never sat in any raps or propheets. But he was in the dining room for lunch every day so you saw him often. But it was a 9-5 job for him so he was gone for dinner and never hung out with students. He appeared harmless, only because you didn't know he was The Man who got kickbacks for getting parents to send their kids to Hell.
And there were a lot of employees who worked under the girls dorms who you just never saw. One of the few places that was locked all the time. Very hidden. The people in there came and went without a word spoken to anyone really. Just little minions doing the all the paperwork and billing. Even Hitler had paper pushers.
But only certain staff went from being helpers to therapists. Will Vernard was staff before I arrived and after and he just did maintenance work. But everyone liked him. Never showed up in any raps as far as I know. Lou, the guy who worked at the farm was on and off with raps. Sometimes he was there, sometimes not. Yet he had basically the same job description as Will Vernard. And the night watchman once appeared in a rap, but he was never made "staff."
So I kind of wonder how some went from helpers to therapists? Hindsight lets me surmise they had a process for weeding out who would conform and who would not. In the CEDU Documentary, one of the videos has a former staff member at CEDU describing how they sent him a questionnaire with questions like; "Do you consider corporal punishment in the school an acceptable form of discipline?" Answers would be very revealing. In this way they could find people who would not be too opposed to being abusive towards kids or looking the other way while others were. And I don't think Will Vernard was the type who would have condoned that. And yet they were there daily and had to see what was going on. Did they stick around, heads in the sand just for the paycheck?
try another castle:
--- Quote ---had an office in that underground lair beneath the girls dorms and the library
--- End quote ---
One of the few places on campus Id never been to. While I was there, Tim Brace's apartment was there, and the other part was the crystal cave, (so named because it was so fucking cold during the winter) a dorm that was sometimes in use, sometimes not. I think you used to get haircuts on part of that first floor, too.
Oh, and how's this for Lou? Both he and Wendy went through the entire program. I'd been in a few raps with Lou simply as a staff participant, and everything Id ever heard him say in raps was uttered in the same low-key tone as if he were just talkin with you out on the farm.
Chuck was similarly low-key during the time I was there, but later accounts state that he became a power staff, or at least tried too.
RMA Survivor:
Lou had that quiet, composed cowboy kind of voice. He did have a bit of a retired drill sergeant demeanor, not seeming to be too comfortable with undisciplined kids, but I could see him going through the program as a staff and not making any waves or even being noticed much while he did. Kind of Chuck in my I and Me workshop. There, but not really there.
But Chuck I could tell had some anger issues just below the surface. His facial muscles were always tight, he was a perfectionist and those kind generally have anger issues towards others who settle for "good enough." It is hard to imagine him becoming a full fledged staff member because he appeared to be a bit like Joe Sweeney in that he seemed to not want to do anything more than build stuff with his hands. Chuck built the pit in the living room all by himself. The cowhide seat cushions, the flag stone floor and rock fireplace. He was good at it, even though the cowhide had to go. But I can see him becoming power staff. If he became staff, he would have turned to the dark side quickly. As I have mentioned, I think CEDU/RMA had a system for weeding out the weak willed, those who would condone, participate in, or turn a blind eye to abuses. Chuck would fit that description. And didn't he later become an escort too? Following Richard Armstrong's footsteps?
But while I was there, I had no problems with him. He was pretty quiet, didn't say much, didn't participate in hardly anything and when he did, you never noticed he was there.
Funny and related story; I had a guy in my peer group named Mark. We were in the Brothers or whatever propheet where they give you characters to play like Dudley Do-Right. During a rap or something, someone said I should talk to him and I said I didn't know him well enough to comment on anything in his life. That I never even saw him around, had no idea who he hung out with. Someone then asked an older student who was in the propheet with us to say something to him because he was his dorm head. I jumped in and said I was in the dorm too and that Mark wasn't in the dorm with us. The dorm head agreed. Then Mark said..."I am in your dorm. I've been in your dorm for six months..." After the propheet we talked to the other three members of the dorm who all agreed there was some other guy in there but weren't sure what his name was. Six months! Talk about being invisible. He got reamed hard in the propheet and later in raps for being a ghost. I actually envied him. To remain anonymous so long in the program, nobody yelling at you, nobody even noticing you for months. God that would have been sweet!
So during the rest of the propheet whenever we had to go around the room and everyone says their character part, he had to stand up and say 'Hi, my name is Mark. You might not know me, but I have been living in your dorm for the past six months." Poor guy.
try another castle:
--- Quote ---So during the rest of the propheet whenever we had to go around the room and everyone says their character part, he had to stand up and say 'Hi, my name is Mark. You might not know me, but I have been living in your dorm for the past six months." Poor guy.
--- End quote ---
You have to admit, that's a pretty funny lug. Especially when you realize that it says faaar more about the school than it did about mark and his dormmates.
I cant conceive of being able to fly under the radar for as long as six months like that. I'd say he had Harry's invisibility cloak, but Rowling hadn't even written it into existence yet.
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