Perspective | In the ’80s, boys’ prep schools like Kavanaugh’s could be bastions of misogyny wapo.st/2NsbaPF?tid=ss…
2/"The girls — now women — of Holton-Arms have been wrestling with their own memories of that time and have come up with a definitive assessment of the culture. This past week more than 1,000 Holton alumnae signed a letter in support of Ford. Her account of being attacked was
3/"“all too consistent with stories we heard and lived while attending Holton,” their letter said. One friend who attended Holton-Arms commuted to Landon to take a high school French class as part of an early experiment in co-education. “I loved Holton, and I loved French, and
4/"that experience stuck out in my mind as horrific,” she told me, asking to remain anonymous out of concern that her family would be harassed. She recalled being shoved off the bleachers at a football game by one Landon student and thrown, fully clothed, into a swimming pool by
5/"another. Several of her friends in recent days remembered Landon students driving past the Holton campus and screaming “beaver” from their car. “I hated it,” she told me by email, “but thought it was just normal.”
6/"What happens next is a matter for the Senate and the nation. But one thing should not be in doubt: Ideas that we consider anachronistic today — about women, male entitlement, even what we now call rape culture — were not just common views of that era. They thrived at places
7/"like Georgetown Prep, which Kavanaugh, in his confirmation hearing, called “very formative.” Three years ago, Kavanaugh jokingly said in a speech that “what happens at Georgetown Prep, stays at Georgetown Prep. That’s been a good thing for all of us.”
8/"Today a better accounting of what went on at places like Georgetown Prep might help us all see our flaws more clearly."
