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The summer before my freshman year of high school, I attended a science-themed summer camp at the University of Florida.
It was a cool week! I stood on top of a nuclear reactor. I accidentally sabotaged a lesson on overfishing and tragedy of the commons by independently reinventing the concept of community governance. (And militias. It's a long story.)
Like many nerds, I grew up steeped in science. But it wasn't the lessons in science that stuck with me for twenty years. No, the thing that stuck with me about this particular week was the drama.[1]
There was, in hindsight, a lot of drama. I suppose that's what happens when you put twenty-four teenaged boys and girls in a shared dorm for a week. Not that this was obvious in the beginning; the counselors certainly didn't seem prepared for what they'd soon unleash, both before and after the Incident. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We had not been on the U of F campus more than fifteen minutes before there began to emerge a hierarchy. At the top were the Cool Kids, a group of three students whose mediocre charisma put them in the upper 5% of students who might attend a summer camp called "Science Quest." The Cool Kids featured such teenaged exemplars as the Tall Guy With a Football and the Relatively Charming Boy Genius. In the beginning, they were friendly and magnanimous in their attention, traits which likely facilitated their rapid acquisition of status.
So there were the Cool Kids, and then there was the rest of us. I recall a smaller semi-clique also forming, featuring a handful of the most stereotypically nerdy and restrained among us. We can call them the True Nerds, in a halfhearted attempt to distinguish them from the rest of the students who might attend a summer camp called "Science Quest."
It was a largely friendly cliquification, at first. It was a small enough cadre that, as far as I recall, everyone managed to spend some time with the Cool Kids. I managed to stay on good terms with the Cool Kids and the True Nerds alike, while identifying more strongly with the latter, who seemed genuinely nice in a way the Cool Kids couldn't quite replicate.
Things began to get tense around the middle of the week. Now, I was not privy to all the details of what precipitated the Incident, so I'm going mostly off guesswork and hearsay for this part. As I understand it, at least one of the boys started harassing at least one of the girls. (I don't know who the culprit was or were, but I have my suspicions.) This harassment culminated in someone leaving a condom outside a dorm room belonging to a few of the girls. As a message, I guess.
This was predictably upsetting. It might have all blown over anyway, but one of the girls - let's call her Bailey - called home to describe the harassment. Her parents, also understandably upset, called the school.
The following morning, it was announced that (1) a curfew was in effect and (2) dorms with guests had to keep the doors open at all times. There may have been other repercussions, but for a bunch of teens prickly about their ability to hang out in peace, these two sucked.
The adults did not say in so many words that Bailey had been the one to complain.[2] The rumor mill deduced it anyway, and from that moment on Bailey was a pariah. I wasn't present for most of the unpleasantness, but later events would make it clear to me just how bad it had gotten. Teenagers can be nasty, and the Cool Kids (who seemed unusually upset at the new rules, for some reason) were the nastiest of all.
The crunchy nugget at the center of the Cool Kids was a clever and outgoing fellow, the aforementioned Relatively Charming Boy Genius. This was a guy who gave off the vibe of being smart enough to coast on most of his classes without ever really needing to work at it. He was also, most likely, high as a kite on at least two occasions; one evening he managed to get his butt stuck in a trash can, and for ten minutes straight all he managed to do about this predicament was to flail his limbs about and giggle.
Let's call him Avery.
One evening near the end of the week, myself, Avery, and perhaps ten more of us were hanging out in one of the dorms chatting and playing cards. (With the door open, of course, not that I recall any of the adults ever paying any attention whatsoever to the goings-on within.)
Apropos of nothing, Avery began to complain about Bailey. I don't recall the exact words he used, but it was something in the neighborhood of "This is all her fault, the stupid bitch. How dare she go whining to Mommy just because of a little prank." He went on like this for a while, card game forgotten, while several of his peers sat in awkward silence or nodded in apparent support. (It was around this time I began to appreciate just what Bailey must have been going through in the last day or two.)
After it became clear that Avery wasn't going to run out of vicious insults anytime soon, I mustered my courage and interjected. "Look," I said,[3] "Maybe it was a mistake for Bailey to call home. But it's over now, and we ought to move on. You're being really nasty behind her back, and if you keep it up I'm going to leave."
Avery grumbled into reluctant silence, at this, and the card game continued...for about a minute. Then it started up again. "Okay but really, wasn't she such a horrible precious - "
True to my word, I got up and left.
I don't know what I expected; I sort of figured it would end there, and I'd go read in my room for a while.
Instead, Avery got up to follow me.
Then the rest of the group got up to follow him.
I didn't even make it back to my room before Avery caught up with me, drawing me into his room to talk. He was followed in short order by what felt like half the summer camp's worth of kids, forming a loose semicircle around us. My heart beat in my throat; everyone seemed mesmerized.
Avery, it turned out, had more to say. "You have to admit, tattling was a dick move," he insisted.
"That's not really a reason to keep being so mean," I replied, feeling baffled.
We went back and forth like this for a while, Avery seemingly determined to...convince me that Bailey was actually a terrible person, I guess, and that his decision to treat her like pond scum in perpetuity was wholly justified? I'm not entirely sure what he was going for, but it didn't really get any better after the first bit.
I eventually began to get fed up with the whole scene, and some of audience were starting to fret, so I stuck out my hand to Avery. "Look," I said, with as much reasonableness as I could muster, "can we just shake hands and forget about it?" But Avery was having none of it. He kept right on arguing. I don't remember what else was said, but I sure don't recall anyone stepping in to back him up. The tide had turned.
It was not until one of the other students literally broke down crying and begged Avery to just shake hands that he finally, grudgingly, caved. One tense handshake later, the incident was over, and everyone sort of awkwardly dispersed.
I did not hear another word spoken against Bailey for the rest of the week. (I vaguely recall someone thanking me for speaking out, later, but I don't know whether to trust that memory.) Much to my regret, I don't think I ever got a chance to pull Bailey aside and apologize for failing to notice what was happening and speak up sooner.
Nonetheless, Avery's behavior had crossed a line. The following evening saw the True Nerds cheerfully hanging out with the rest of the campers while the Cool Kids were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they found some corner to sulk in, grumbling miserably in search of a way to blame it all on Bailey.
This was a striking moment for my fifteen-year-old self. I'd been nervous and a little bit frightened about high school; my social life felt weak and fragile. This incident reminded me, nervous as I was, that there is kindness and right-thinking in most of us, and that sometimes all it takes to surface it is for one soul to rise and say "Enough."
What follows here is true as best as my faulty memory allows, but it's been twenty years and details fade with time. I've not said anything I know to be false, the broad strokes are pretty vivid in my mind, and I've called out where I think I might be hallucinating.
Not that I recall, anyway.
I'm paraphrasing quotes, but the content should be basically accurate as far as I can remember.
