In the mid-1960s I went to a tony prep school in greater LA, now known as Harvard-Westlake, then simply Harvard School (no formal relation with Harvard U). It was then boys-only. The tradition was that the school got to send one boy per year to Harvard U. I was not likely to be that boy, because the Headmaster, an Episcopal priest, really didn’t like me. Although raised Christian, I had raised objections to Christianity in the Sacred Studies class he taught.
I was also becoming a bit of an anti-Vietnam war leftist, and this was a military school. One of my proudest moments was doing an interview with our Military instructor, a retired Army guy, Colonel Stauffer. He had been an aide to Gen. Westmoreland in Vietnam, and in our class on “counter-insurgency,” he allowed that the war was being run very badly. (This was in 1966.) I decided to interview him for the school newspaper, which I edited.
He told me that he took early retirement rather than keep assisting what he considered a criminal government in South Vietnam. He said they regularly murdered their opponents and blamed it on the NLF. Off-the-record he said he would prefer “playing piano in a whore-house” to serving there. I couldn’t print that, but I did publish an interview with him critical of the US war effort. The parents/alumni went crazy, and I’m sure the school felt the heat. Col Stauffer was not renewed and I was not on the good-boy list.
Now, this is not to say I was not in a highly privileged position. I was admitted to Harvard U and I’m sure it didn’t hurt that I was 3rd generation — my father and grandfather both went there. Also, I was President of my senior class, having lost a school-wide election to be one of the four top ‘Prefects.’ The senior class counted its own votes. (As I was to learn later, that was important.)
I came off very badly for the first Harvard interview. Unshaven and unslept, I had spent the night finishing up an edition of the school newspaper. The Harvard alum who interviewed me told me later he didn’t think I really wanted to go. I had a 2nd chance interview with him – perhaps part of my ‘legacy’ privilege. I did much better, explaining why I was off my game, and he seemed to like me. I fit the preppy bill — good grades, AP, Class Prez, a letterman’s sweater (Swimming), edited both the school newspaper and its literary mag.
When our Headmaster, Father Chalmers, came up to me in the Spring of 1967 to tell me I’d been accepted to Harvard, he admitted that it was against his recommendation and ‘should have gone to another boy.’ I was too happy to care.
Later that Spring, upon graduation, 4 English teachers, two of whom I loved, gave me a graduation present. They told me a little secret about last year’s election, where I had failed to place as one of the 4 Prefects. They told me that I had actually won the most votes and would have been 1st Prefect, but that the Headmaster had nixed it. (This was before my interview with Col. Stauffer, but after my apostasy in Sacred Studies.) My class counting its own votes got me the Class Prez spot.
So I had 2 kinds of privilege at odds — one for me as a Harvard ‘legacy,’ the other against me as not being the ‘favored boy’ of an elite prep school. Poor Little Me! I wish I could say this experience was character building. But in fact, it gave me a false sense of my powers. I thought I could always say anything I wanted and get away with it.
Turns out I couldn’t. A few years later I was ‘deselected’ from the Peace Corps before going to India. This was for my oft-expressed doubts about US-sponsored development projects, and despite getting the best grades in our program in every subject — including agriculture. But I had treated it like a class where I could say anything as long as I said it well. The other trainees got up a petition that I shouldn’t be canned, but it didn’t matter. The Peace Corps knew I was trouble. And from their point of view, they were right.
On the rebound from the Peace Corps, I went back to Harvard but got kicked out for some disruptive demonstrations. Not kicked out by Harvard itself — but by my own father. He said I was becoming a Marxist, and he wasn’t going to pay for it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was actually a libertarian socialist. Not that it would have mattered.
So — another battle of privileges. My legacy Dad got me into Harvard. But closing his checkbook, he also pulled me out. Harvard at first said they’d loan me the money, but then withdrew this offer after a few more demonstrations. (My grades were fine.) But I finished years later with my own money and went on to get a PhD in Economics at Yale. Sadder but wiser, I no longer count so much on privileges to pull me through. But I’ve had a very rich life and am still a ridiculously lucky guy.
Jim Stodder
Welcome to Retrospect, Jim. This story was an eye-opener to me, and I gain an understanding of your privileged situation and both the benefits and drawbacks to it. My background being so different (female, lower middle class at least in early childhood, first in family with a four-year private college education), I do admire you for giving up some of that privilege on principle.
Thanks, Marian. I wish I could, but I can’t agree that I was “giving up some of that privilege on principle.” I may have been partially motivated by self-flattering ideas of moral principle. But mostly I was doing what I think most people do in crisis situations — what I felt I had to do emotionally, to not go crazy.
So it’s not like there was much consideration or much even choice about it. I don’t believe very much in free will, although I may act like I do. I think we mostly just act out who we are, and we don’t have very much choice in that.
Much enjoyed the story and your unique outlook — particularly as another high school newspaper editor who also got into Harvard. (I think for Harvard this was like being a linebacker and getting in to Penn State.)
But your title confused me, as I first assumed that it referred to a gift certificate for a blender. Am I missing a reference to an esoteric economic principle I know nothing about? Or did you mean “warring,” which certainly makes sense in terms of the push and pull you had to deal with in your academic career.
In the end, you call yourself a “ridiculously lucky guy.” I think you are also a very magnanimous one. I would have punched Father Chalmers right in the nose.
John — You are of course right about my wishing to give the idea of conflicting privileges — and not Waring Blenders! Although I do like to imagine Warring Waring Blenders!
Jim, this is a wonderful story! You were so aware of the privileges you had and how they balanced against the antagonism of the headmaster. Glad you were admitted despite his recommendation against you.
I’m also interested in your passing reference to the Peace Corps. Sounds like that was something you tried to do in the middle of college, and then went back to school after they deselected you. I bet you could write a great story about that too, if given the right prompt.
I wrote to you privately about Waring and Warring, glad we got that straightened out. Welcome to Retrospect! Now that you’re here, I hope you will hang around and keep writing.
You’ve given us a glimpse into quite a rarified life, Jim. I know the children of several friends who have gone to Harvard-Westlake in its current iteration and it is nothing like what you describe. The mid-to-late 60s were a time of great social upheaval and you seemed to be in the epicenter of it, both reacting against and receiving some favor from it. Thank you for sharing this segment of your life. I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Jim, I accidentally misread the expression in one of your concluding sentences as “Stodder but wiser!” Maybe you can make use of that some other time.
It’s great to see your appearance here and I hope it’s the first of many. I found this to be an interesting and well laid-out chronology, reinforcing the theme of the tension between your making use of privilege but also chomping at the bit to be your own person. It’s good to be reminded and an under-recognized reality, that those who stick straight on the privileged path do usually give up a great deal of freedom.
It’s true, Dale, about that feeling of freedom. But it’s a paradox. I didn’t feel it was so much a choice to be free, just being who I had to be. Like I would disappear otherwise.
Thanx Jim for your honest and well-written tale of privilege taken and taken back, and of passion and lessons learned.
Welcome to Retrospect and looking forward to more from your pen!
To have privilege is one thing, but to use it for good is another. Looks like you were able to do the latter, which is no small thing. Welcome to Retrospect, Jim.
Thanks to all for the warm welcome to Retrospect. Nice to share the space with you all. My son & daughter (27 and 30, respectively) have been telling me I should write some of these crazy stories down. Maybe they just meant, “So you can stop telling them to us, Dad!” But I will take them at their word.
Welcome to Retrospect, Jim. As with many of us, the 1960s presented a powerful crosscurrent between entitlement and resistance. You presented us with a wonderful character as a narrator and your “old man” putting away the checkbook read like a character right out of THE GRADUATE. Much fertile ground to till here!