Your rules do not apply here
Innocent until…
What a choice of words: "Innocent until." They could have easily said, "Innocent unless proven guilty," but they did not. Guilt is inevitable.
My calculus teacher was arrested this week, for offences wholly unexpected. I'm sure every female student for the past twenty years could have produced a list of dirty old men on the faculty, and he wouldn't have made a single one. No one I've talked to wants to believe it of him. Fortunately for us, he's innocent. At least until he goes to trial, when, of course, he will be proven guilty. That's the way of things.
He was one of my favorite teachers in high school. He was one of my academic advisor's favorites, too. He'd taught her when she was in eighth grade. I still haven't wrapped my brain around the news. It's a boarding school and generally the rules are different there. It's not the first scandal involving faculty having inappropriate relationships with minors. I don't even think it's the worst. As far as I know, it's the first that wasn't discovered by the school (or the spouse) and quietly dealt with outside the courts of law. Overnight, a teacher disappears. Rumors fly among the students, and rumors fly among the faculty, but no one confirms or denies. The rumors are thought true, because they are not denied. There is no innocence at a place like that.
I'm not sure why this one seems more shocking than the others. Is it because it's the only one confirmed, the only one to escape the Reserve cocoon? Because he sought a minor out anonymously online, which seems out of the way for a teacher looking for minors? Because we wouldn't have pegged him as the type? Perhaps it's the incongruity of it all. The only crime that's punished is the one where the victim wasn't even a victim, but an under cover cop. Maybe we're only upset because it's the newest, and we've forgotten the sting of the others. The other faculty, who knew him far better than I ever did, are just as stunned.
For now, the only thing to do is to try to forget. I'm thousands of miles away; it's not so hard to do. Those who've had to pick up the pieces and even take over his class schedule for the year are choosing denial, which is just as valid. I wonder if this happens at other schools just as often, or if mine is special. Not that anything's happened. He'll be innocent for a while yet, and the others still are because nothing was ever proven. Innocent until, after all.
What a choice of words: "Innocent until." They could have easily said, "Innocent unless proven guilty," but they did not. Guilt is inevitable.
My calculus teacher was arrested this week, for offences wholly unexpected. I'm sure every female student for the past twenty years could have produced a list of dirty old men on the faculty, and he wouldn't have made a single one. No one I've talked to wants to believe it of him. Fortunately for us, he's innocent. At least until he goes to trial, when, of course, he will be proven guilty. That's the way of things.
He was one of my favorite teachers in high school. He was one of my academic advisor's favorites, too. He'd taught her when she was in eighth grade. I still haven't wrapped my brain around the news. It's a boarding school and generally the rules are different there. It's not the first scandal involving faculty having inappropriate relationships with minors. I don't even think it's the worst. As far as I know, it's the first that wasn't discovered by the school (or the spouse) and quietly dealt with outside the courts of law. Overnight, a teacher disappears. Rumors fly among the students, and rumors fly among the faculty, but no one confirms or denies. The rumors are thought true, because they are not denied. There is no innocence at a place like that.
I'm not sure why this one seems more shocking than the others. Is it because it's the only one confirmed, the only one to escape the Reserve cocoon? Because he sought a minor out anonymously online, which seems out of the way for a teacher looking for minors? Because we wouldn't have pegged him as the type? Perhaps it's the incongruity of it all. The only crime that's punished is the one where the victim wasn't even a victim, but an under cover cop. Maybe we're only upset because it's the newest, and we've forgotten the sting of the others. The other faculty, who knew him far better than I ever did, are just as stunned.
For now, the only thing to do is to try to forget. I'm thousands of miles away; it's not so hard to do. Those who've had to pick up the pieces and even take over his class schedule for the year are choosing denial, which is just as valid. I wonder if this happens at other schools just as often, or if mine is special. Not that anything's happened. He'll be innocent for a while yet, and the others still are because nothing was ever proven. Innocent until, after all.