Voices: High schools need grown-up leaders

SAN FRANCISCO — In the spirit of the SSAT tests some eighth-graders around the country are taking about now, here's a multiple-choice question:

A) I attended a prestigious New York high school.

B) Half a dozen of my former teachers have been accused of pedophilia.

C) Although the incidents allegedly happened about 40 years ago, those who say they were abused still grapple with the fallout.

D) All of the above.

That D answer covers the tragedy playing out at Horace Mann School, an elite private K-12 institution in a tony section of the Bronx called Riverdale. Though I didn't fall victim when I went there to the numerous teachers, including the school's late headmaster, who stand accused of sexually molesting dozens of students in the 1970s and '80s, those who say they were abused continue to speak out.

In a recent issue of People magazine, five alleged victims told their tales.

Each story bore the same hallmarks: Vulnerable students were flattered by the attention of arguably brilliant English, music and history teachers, eventually succumbing to long-term abuse. Some were too ashamed to speak out at the time. The few who did were told to produce evidence or remain quiet.

I can't say I was ever aware that this was going on, other than to have a gut feeling that certain teachers exuded a forbidding aura.

The news of the scandal – broken by an HM alum in a 2012 New York Times article headlined "Prep-School Predators" – immediately left me horrified and saddened both for the alleged victims and my own memory of high school. The truth was I had a revelatory time there and had an academic awakening akin to the one showcased in the Robin Williams movie Dead Poets Society.

There was the English teacher who introduced me to The Who and the Dave Brubeck Quartet; the French teacher who improved our diction by making us speak with a coin between our teeth; the soccer coach who welcomed us at his weekend singer-songwriter gigs in Greenwich Village.

Yet all around me, bombs were dropping that caused some of my peers to contemplate suicide.

This all came rushing back to me when news broke this month that the headmaster of a well-regarded high school – a Bay Area Horace Mann if you will – was arrested in a motel room with a passed out 21-year-old girl and numerous drugs. Branson School faculty, board members and alumni rightly rallied around its student body, noting that allegations of one man's shocking secret life did not define its community.

The incident made me wonder: Can't we do better by our kids? Were there really no signs especially in this tell-all social media world that Branson's longtime headmaster, Thomas Woodrow "Woody" Price, may not have been who he said he was?

Horrible reports of pedophile teachers from the '70s don't and shouldn't define the Horace Mann School of 2015, and Price shouldn't redefine Branson as anything other than a 98-year-old institution committed to enlightening the thinkers and leaders of tomorrow.

Branson will get through this, as Horace Mann will. In fact, both schools could and should be bastions of vigilance after their experiences. Both their tales are cautionary ones for countless high schools, public and private, around the USA. This isn't about going on witch hunts. It's about making sure our high-schoolers can make the leap from childhood to adulthood guided by adults who have successfully made that same transition themselves.

Magna est veritas et praevalet: Great is the truth, and it prevails. That's been Horace Mann's motto since its founding in 1887.

The sentiment is admirable. It's just a matter of living up to it.

Della Cava covers technology and culture for Paste BN out of San Francisco.