Life in a Catholic Boys' College

I was a freshman at Regis College, a Jesuit all boys' school, in 1966.  I suspect it felt a lot like Georgetown Prep where Kavanaugh attended high school.  Since it was college, I suppose our academics were more rigorous, but probably not that much.  I mean very few of my classmates turned down an acceptance at Yale to go to Regis.  On the other hand, there were a lot of privileged young men there.  I was not one of them.  Like at Yale, a goodly number of my classmates went on to become lawyers, doctors, politicians, business moguls, etc.  A few of us went on to be high school English teachers, but hey, I'm not complaining.

I've read a couple of op-eds the last two days suggesting that Kavanaugh's alleged behavior is typical of the all male clubs that comprise many of our elite schools.  The drinking culture.  The good old boy insinuations about females.  The bragging about sexual conquests, real and imagined.  The sitting around dorm rooms drinking beers, lighting farts, sharing information on what certain girls at Colorado Women's College or Loretto Heights would let you get away with, and just generally acting like assholes.  All of that behavior, the op-eds suggested, was typical of the kind of schools that groom our "leaders."  And that, the op-eds again suggested, explains all the problems we are having now with sexual politics.

I admit that kind of behavior went on.  I am not ready to admit that it is as typical as the op-ed writers suggest.

At Regis, there was a guy who lived just down the hall from me.  His only purpose for going to college was to bed as many girls from Loretto Heights and CWC as he could get his hands on and he was quite successful at it.  The guy was a lot like Stradlater (a rather evocative last name) in CATCHER IN THE RYE.  He took a long shower in the morning with the rest of us.  He took another one after his ten o'clock class.  Another one after lunch.  Another one mid-afternoon.  Another one prior to going out on an evening's conquest and another one when he got back to the dorm late in the night.  He was a psych major's dream come true.  Calling Dr. Freud!

Some of the guys on my floor pinned bras onto their bulletin boards as trophies.  I was thinking about borrowing one of my mom's bras so I could fit in, but I thought better of it.

There were plenty of bull sessions in other rooms where we compared notes on "famous" girls from one of the plethora of undergraduate schools in the area.

On weekends, we would all forget about our books and head up into the mountains for a woodsy.  We didn't call them keggers then.  And the goal of all those weekend beer brawls was to get drunk as quickly as possible, throw-up, and eventually pass out.  The guys did it.  The girls did it.  I suspect a lot of the Jesuit priests did it as well only they were using vast quantities of scotch.

When it was too cold for a woodsy, we would have motel parties at the round Holiday Inn by Mile-High Stadium, or the Center Motel on 6th and Federal.  We would stop by at North Denver Liquor on the way to the party and get our booze from George who happily kept the underaged drinkers at Regis supplied.  Most of us left the motel rooms by early morning.  But others spent the night and those that did spend the night probably forgot everything about the experience, either out of convenience or because they were too drunk to remember.

All that illicit behavior was the stuff of legends at Regis.  Those of us who didn't bed anything that moved, or who didn't pass out every Saturday, or who didn't use female undergarments as a bulletin board decoration, looked on the ones who did with a certain amused detachment.  The constant showerer and his cronies were in the minority.  There were only a few of them, but they made a lot of noise and just assumed that all the rest of us who still had trouble getting up the nerve to ask a girl for a date, were wildly jealous.

They were wrong.  We weren't wildly jealous; we were quietly offended.  I know.  I know.  We shouldn't have been quiet about our feelings, but we were just eighteen or so and just assumed that we were fundamentally lacking in social skills.

But you know what.  All my classmates who went on to be lawyers, politicians, and the like, the Tim Harts and Placido Herreras, and Tony Rottinos, were a lot like me.  We didn't prey on girls, even though we might have liked to give predation a try.  We didn't approve the behavior.  And when we got drunk on weekends, we almost always ended up getting sick by ourselves and spending the next day in misery.  We were good kids, but the operative word here is "kids."  I look back on those times and don't really regret any of it.  Well, that's not completely true.  I still wish I had that great Regis sweatshirt that I lost up at tunnel number one.

I don't know what to believe about Kavanaugh.  I tend to believe his accusers simply because they are willing to subject themselves to the recriminations of old Republican males (is there any other kind?).  I do know the kind of atmosphere Kavanaugh lived in when he was an undergraduate.  Temptation and peer pressure coming at him from all sides.  If he withstood all that, if his accusers are not telling the truth, then I can see him being a Supreme even if I don't like his positions on almost everything. On the other hand, if Kavanaugh was anything like the constant shower guy down the hall, the idea of him becoming anything more influential than a homeless person begging for scraps is unacceptable.