I went for a walk in the woods, where I had spent so much time four decades ago. There hadn't been a course to teach me the names of the trees and birds back then, but there is one now. Some of the an¬imals are even wired so that their move¬ments can be radio-tracked. Sitting down, I soon attracted a half-dozen curious, nervously chirping chickadees. 

I felt glad that the school had weathered its storm and that the kids had come through pretty much unscathed, although there are still plenty of issues that need to be addressed. The unifying thread among the various constituencies that are always doing a Darwinian dance in any school— the teachers, the students, the alumni, the trustees, the administration, the parents—is that all of them obviously care deeply about the place. And, in the words of John Buckston, a former vice-rector at St. Paul's, "Every¬body is the hero of his own novel."

A number of alumni have characterized Anderson's regrettable tenure as a case of "hubris" –the tragic flaw of overreaching that has brought down mythical kings such as Oedipus and money kings of today. It seems to be the big word of the moment. The other day, a commentator on CNN was expounding on the "hubris" of the Republi¬can Party.
      Hubris seems to have affected not just the Bish but the board too. "They're an arro¬gant, snotty bunch, and not very smart," one teacher told me. Their fatal error was to blow off donors, alumni, and teachers who care about the school and were trying to raise important questions about its direction. 

      Some stodgy old Paulies think the school itself has a case of hubris. In their view, it was the extravagance of the new gym that brought about the drowning of a student in the swimming pool. The school had survived for almost 150 years without a pool. Now money is being raised for a multi-million-dollar boathouse. Where is it going to end?
      Instead of building a new boathouse, why not use the money to make an inventory of all the products the school uses, and get the kids involved? It could even be a course. Maybe they would think twice before ripping off three feet of toilet paper once they found out that a million acres of old-growth boreal forest in northern Alberta are being ground up every year to make the stuff. 

       Why not have the kids follow the money trail-find out how the money coming into the school was made, and in exactly what sort of "instruments" the endowment is invested? Have them look into how much of the oblivious hyper-consumption taking place not just here but across America is made possible by the backbreaking labor of millions of Third World peasants. How many ecosystems are being degraded and destroyed by our way of life? Get the kids to print their homework on both sides of the page, case their dorms for energy leaks, and take quick showers-and be grateful that the water's hot. 

      A course like that would produce some responsible citizens, and it would save the school a lot of money. St. George's, the quirky little progressive school in Montreal that my three youngest sons attend, got the whole student body involved in a consumption-and-waste inventory of its physical plant, and has saved a bundle as a result. Once the St. Paul's inventory is done, the kids can go forth and get the whole country to do it. If the school could get that going, and implement a little "corrective salutary deprivation," then it would be a complete Utopia, and Drs. Shattuck and Drury would be proud of it once more.
      The chickadees cheered. 

POSTSCRIPT

I had said, in a sentence that didn't make the cut, "I hope the Search Committee will take a very long time before they choose the next Rector," because they couldn't do any better than Bill Matthews, and that is who they ended up going with. Made of the sparse old Yankee stuff that is the backbone of America's erstwhile greatness, he will be a welcome antidote to the  hyperconsumption and moral obliviousness that are eroding our society. 

      I was amazed by the hundred of e-mails that this piece elicited. It must have touched a nerve. Why were so many people so fascinated by the scandals this exclusive boarding school? It wasn't just that it's the sort of place that the nouveaux-riches are doing everything they can to get their kids into.  My rant in the last paragraph especially seems to have hit home with a lot of readers. Americans are being to realize that each of us has to reduce his personal ecological footprint, as our consumption is responsible for a quarter of the global warming problem that may be irreversible at this point and is already clearly wreaking havoc with the biosphere, while Bush, like Nero with the flames of Rome leaping around and engulfing him, fiddles as the world burns. The 20-somethings, recently called  "the Greenest Generation" in the New York Times, are particularly concerned, because this is the world they are going to inherit and will have to do something about as the shit continues to hit the fan. Students are Williams College have been having a contest to see who can use the least amount of energy by cracking their books during daylight hours, etc. 

      As if to ram this message home, in May, St. Paul's, the breeder of so many of the ruthless and selfish Republican fat cats who are destroying this country and the planet, was slammed by a "biblical flood," the likes of which it had never seen
in its 150 years-- another of the extreme weather events that are happening around the world with increased frequency and violence due to the increased amount of electric energy into the atmosphere from our emissions (as explained in Dispatch #5, "What Have We Done to the Weather?"). Or due to greedy capitalism, if you want to look at it politically, or if you're a Christian (or a Muslim or  a Jew) you might be tempted to think, maybe the Lord, or Allah, or Jehovah, is trying to tell us something here. I prefer to think that nature is sending  a very strong message to the very heart of the society that is the main problem, the outlaw state that has no respect for its laws or even its own. The lines in my piece about the Lord not smiling on this venerable institution and the hybris of its monumental late-empire climax-of the-consumer culture building spree now seem to have a prophetic resonance.  Maybe the voice I somehow had the temerity to speak in was not mine. Maybe I was John the Baptist sent in the guise of a journalist alumnus to give the school and the society a reality check. 

                -- A.S.