Groton Not Forgotten

The expression has justified the notoriously cruel amusements of teenage males for centuries, but its alleged acceptance at the Groton School has had messy consequences for the elite academy. With a former student filing a negligence suit against the school, its policies on student behaviorand their implicationshave come under close scrutiny.

The suit states that schoolmates repeatedly molested Cannon Zeke Hawkins, now a junior at Brown, during his sophomore year. Hawkins claims that on the night of the most serious incident, a group of students, led by a student in his year, came into his room and pinned him to the floor. According to Hawkins, they then tore off his shirt and pants, grabbed at his testicles and penis, inserted his fingers into his rectum through his boxers and licked his face. Hawkins spoke out about these assaults a few months before he was scheduled to graduate, and in response, Groton launched an investigation. Although the administration punished several students who were found to have participated in inappropriate hazing, Hawkins remained dissatisfied with the schools response of the school to his claim of assault. His frustration pushed him to vent his story at roll call on Revisit Day, the Prefrosh Weekend of Groton, when admitted prospective students come to get a taste of the school.

It was devastating, unexpected, says Groton alum Jonathan B. Durham 04, adding that Hawkins spoke of homosexual rape in the diatribe. He was shunnedpeople were really put off.

Hawkins dropped out of school six weeks before graduation, because [his announcement of his harassment] turned him into a pariah. At least one teacher started to play games with his grades, says his lawyer, Lawrence E. Hardoon. Hawkins basically felt he was drummed out of school. Hardoon points out that a student would not jeopardize his admission to an Ivy League school unless the climate at Groton was truly unbearable. This was why it ultimately led to a lawsuit, he says. The bottom line, which for me is ultimately shocking, is that the school graduates the two students accused of abuse, and my client does not get a diploma. Hawkins opted to get his diploma from a local public school rather than continue at Groton. Groton officials contend that Hawkins was given the opportunity to finish school by doing work at home, but he refused.

No one was particularly pleased with what had happened, but it seemed that the issue was resolved.

Then two years later, in late August, on the day before Hawkins turned 21, the last day he could legally do so, he filed a suit against Groton, blaming the school for not taking his story seriously.

Hardoon describes his client as a concerned student who couldnt sit still and allow injustice to happen.

Groton alumni at Harvard say Hawkins didnt experience anything more than run-of-the-mill prep school horsing aroundactivities he participated in actively as a student.

As Elbridge A. Colby 02 explains, hazing has a complex history in boarding school culture. Thus, Hawkins story is more complex than either side would like people to believe.

Sophomores at Groton move into one of four specific dorms, where they are the youngest members of a hierarchical system. The seniors, all of whom are considered prefects, sit on top. Each dorm has ample time for its members to interact within this system, as boarders are left more or less unsupervised after the 10 p.m. curfew. Frequently, prefects like to exert their authority by engaging in typical hazing, as John A. Roberts 02 calls it.

The seniors would bust in while we were sleeping at 3 a.m. and hit us with pillows, Roberts adds. I guess a couple of people got hazed more than others. But I sort of enjoyed it to some degree. I thought it was exciting.

To most students, whatever hazing still existed was but a strange holdover from the old days.

There were rumors we would hear about, says Rylan M. Hamilton 02. And we would see lesser manifestations, like goosing or towel-slapping, which was weird, but not some sort of epidemic.

This sort of innocent hazing has allegedly turned much more sexual in the past, however, when certain prefects allegedly abused their positions in some way.

A homoerotic aspect is always latent in boarding school life, Colby says. With young adolescent boys in such close quarters, anyone who has hormones at a slightly higher gear or off-kilter is going to have the opportunity to perpetrate these kinds of homoerotic hazing stuff. Its an inherent defect in the system.

Much of the time, these homoerotic jokes were harmless. Renny McPherson 03, a Crimson editor, remembers the soccer team would frequently pretend to neck in the dining hall.

One of Hawkins good friends played a prank on a male student whose sexuality was ambiguous by pretending to come out to him, according to several students and Hardoon. When the student confided in a teacher and told him about what happened, the teacher brought the matter to the attention of the administration.

The boys involved were D.C.ed, for exhibiting conduct not becoming of a Groton student, which means that a mark is put on the students transcript for colleges to see. Its a strong punishment, says Jeremy W. Blocker 04, but its not the end of the world.

The punishments unleashed an enormously strong reaction in Hawkins, according to students who believe this was the real cause of his anger toward the school.

The whole thing is really a vendetta, Hamilton says. The charges are so exaggerated.

Hawkins lawyer has a different take. No one is defending the prank [against the other student], Hardoon says. But Hawkins was spurred to act out of a sense of justiceZeke was shocked: How can you do this, how can you go around complaining about what these children did, knowing what has happened before?

The Groton School has made much of the complexity of the issues that brought Hawkins suit to surface. In a letter sent out to members of the Groton community addressing the hostile media onslaught that followed, Headmaster William M. Polk wrote, It is important to note that the allegations were first reported by Mr. Hawkins in the context of his trying to bargain with me to stop disciplinary action from being taken against other students in an unrelated disciplinary proceeding.

Hardoon contends rather that the incident unleashed much more psychologically complex questions in Hawkins. He brought out the the issue, and brought along all this stuff with it, he says, The genie was now out of the bottle, and the impact [of the molestations] was revisiting him. This was the reason that Hawkins eventually decided to press charges after his long silence, according to Hardoon.

Hawkins went to the headmaster to plead for his friends, and revealed the details of the hazings that had been committed in the past.

He probably was completely offensive, says Colby, because he didnt want them to do anything, because he wanted to rise up for a cause. He thinks hes Braveheart, hes obsessed with that movie. He loved this idea of a rebel rising up against oppression and protecting freedom. And thats a nice parallel because the movie Braveheart has very little to do with the actual historical record and likewise Zekes accusations have little to do with what was actually going on.

The administration says that they managed to take Hawkins claim seriously, despite what seemed like questionable motives on his part.

When Zeke first raised the issue to the headmaster, even though he took the allegations seriously, it did strike a political chord, says Karen Schwartzman, who handles public relations for the Groton School. It seemed like a political endeavor and the headmaster had to overcome that. She points to the schools offers to allow Hawkins to finish from home and the fact that several students were indeed reprimanded for their excessive hazing. Many students at school at the time of the events feel that Hawkins rage was misdirected, and were put off by the way he handled his crisis.

Most of the school thinks that some of the stuff Zeke talked about probably happened but are mad about the way it was handled, says Durham. He was not fixing anything. He was out to get back at the school. The whole thing turned into a crusade against sexual molestation, which has its place, but it was weird in the context.

Some assert that degree of protection Hawkins is demanding from the school would rob the students of their liberty and privacy.

There were bad things that happened, Colby says, but the kids to whom this did happen dont say so because theyre concerned about the good of the school. Its ironic, because Groton prides itself much more than Andover and Exeter about fostering a caring environment, but it cant know everything that goes on in dorms without being a police state.

Hardoons language carries a different tone. He says Hawkins was victimized and suffered in silence because of a code of silence that existed at the school.

Members of the Groton community see truth in this assertion.

Hawkins was right in taking the matter to the attention of the administration, Colby says. Where he was woefully wrong was in accusing the school of being a malicious party. Groton can only be so on top of things without being a prison, but they take very seriously the idea of in loco parentis. Had they known what was the extent of what was going on, they would have taken firmer action.

Students say that Hawkins suit will have no effect on the schools current hazing policy, as Groton has already taken steps to halt the practice.

By the time I was a senior, the school had made an effort to adressing [hazing], Roberts says. There was a lot of talk about it my junior year, and at the start of senior year, we had several meetings where we were sat down to make it clear that hazing wouldnt be tolerate to any degree. And by and large, the students werent hazed.

The school responded to the incident on Revisit Day, when Hawkins announced that hazing was common at Groton, by launching an investigation, and reporting the allegations to the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS).

The investigation really was very serious, says Hamilton. Everyone was interviewed.

The Boston Globe, however, reported that Grotons statement to the DSS had been ambiguous and incomplete. Though many alumni support the school wholeheartedly, some do concede that it might have been more conscientious.

Nonsense, Schwartzman says. Groton is a serious place, they take their role seriously. Any suggestion that a major league school would not react truthfully and conscientiously is ridiculous. We immediately sent out 6,000 copies of [Headmaster Polks] letter to all members of the Groton community.

Hardoon is happy to point out three other students other than Hawkins spoke out as having been made uncomfortable through hazing, but Schwartzman counters that no one used the word rape besides Zeke and his lawyer, and that the students implicated were punished.

But, as Durham says, In ways, you can see how the school was trying to sweep everything under the rug.

One of the schools main motives for this apparent silence may have been the desire to keep the story from the media. That attempt failed.

Lawsuits Says Assaults Are Routine at an Exclusive Prep School, was the headline of the New York Times article covering the story that came out Aug. 30. The next day, 20/20 aired a piece, which many alumni feel sides heavily with Hawkins.

Groton alumni overwhelmingly say the school was picked upon by the press, avid for a chance to portray expensive, exclusive schools as somehow corrupt.

[Private schools] are an easy target, Hamilton says. Colby adds, The New York Times article was unquestionably biased. Colby says that the problem is that the school is handicapped because the people involved were under 18 [and are protected by privacy laws]. It really cant defend itself. Its an undeserved black mark against the school.

Many students approve of the schools discretion. Groton has gotten into trouble in the past when the media took quotes completely out of context, says John R. Shea 02. They once shot a video under the auspices of its being about the life of Groton students, but they edited it into the story of how miserable this one girl was there.

Hardoon stresses that it was never Hawkins goal to antagonize the school. My client cared about the school, too. He believed that this is what the school stood foryou should speak up. No one was taking the position that Groton was not a good school. My client and his family made it clear.

For many, it is difficult to come to any final conclusion on the Hawkins matter. Few men come forward and say, Ive been raped, observes Blocker, but there is no clear answer. The fact he waited till the last possible day makes me not believe it, and believe it a bit more.

To many Groton alumni, though, it is the stereotyped image of their school that they find most upsetting. Groton has excellent educators who are concerned with the lives of students, Shea says. The school had a lot of influence on my life, and Im really glad I went there. Groton was a great experience.