Worst drunken experience at CH

ben ashton · Post by **ben ashton** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:04 pm

ive only just had breakfast!

Richard Ruck · Post by **Richard Ruck** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:07 pm

ben ashton wrote:ive only just had breakfast!

Best to stick to a good breakfast drink, then.

Armagnac, Calvados or similar usually hit the spot.

Post by **jtaylor** » Thu May 05, 2005 1:16 pm

All fair points, and well put.
Just trying to raise that there are highly likely to be concerns from CH, and if want to bridge the gap between Grecians and Old Blues, then we may need to bend a little, but not completely, to moderate slightly.
Just wanted to canvass views....so keep the input coming.

J

JamesF35 · Post by **JamesF35** » Thu May 05, 2005 4:32 pm

I very much support what Richard Ruck has said. We may live, today, in a society of over protective political correctness but back in the seventies, when Richard and I were at CH, it was very different and not necessarily worse - just different. What we considered to be learning to stand up for ourselves in life would now be considered bulying. I don't think I suffered from the ways of the time but I have friends who consider that they did. This is a huge debate and MUST be allowed to continue. Only through reasonable debate of these subjects will we find a sensible compromise for future generations. Look back in history to see the regimes that have tried to block out their past or rewrite history in some way. Do we want to end up the same ?

I would hope that any parent of a prospective squit (are we allowed to call them that now ?) who reads through this forum will be impressed with the ability to reason that nearly all OBs have. This forum is very much a tribute to the education we all received in this plce and in times to come . . . . .

Hendrik · Post by **Hendrik** » Thu May 05, 2005 7:43 pm

Julian: I can totally see where you're coming from, I know you had aspirations for this to be a forum for ALL people connected with CH (so success, really). You have also been very good about moderating (so in most cases not moderating!) the thread content. An almost impossible balance, but it seems to be perfectly OK as it stands. Owing to 'auto-correct' style profanity-censoring, we can now rest at ease that impressionable 12 year olds won't learn any naughty words that they didn't already know (as if!). There's no racism here, no cults, no gambling or 'pyramid schemes', and certainly no porn (he laments).

Everyone:
Logic would thus follow that any problem the Christ's Hospital Foundation would have with this forum is purely ideological (because it isn't ideologically pure?).

How can you justify banning an ideology, or a way of thinking?

It was mentioned that the problem was something to do with glorifying bullying. Why, then, does CH continue to employ (some) staff who openly hold the belief that bullying does improve your life? Why does CH still install a system of arbitrary hierarchy among its pupils? To ban the forum is simply hippocritical.

I propose that we write to the person who's ultimate decision it was to ban the forum and let them know, politely, just how we feel. [Julian, would you be so kind as to yield the relevant e-mail address?]

We should not take the school's actions too finally: they even banned the Greenpeace website.

Yours in solidarity,
Old Blue Liberty Alliance (OBLA).
Membership by free association.

tobeconfirmed · Post by **tobeconfirmed** » Thu May 05, 2005 9:08 pm

I just thought I'd add, to those who may not know - that it's not the whole school in general that has banned this site - it's the nice people working in the ICT department, who have condemned it as 'URL redirection.'

I'm guessing that must be the bit at the beginning, where you have to click again to get into the forum itself. Although that reassuringly doesn't mean 'chat' or 'useless,' which are also categories that they use when filtering websites.
So yeah, it's not the 'ethos' or the SMT or anything like that whose decision it was to close the site to pupils, it's just the people in the ICT, who aren't really 'members of staff' (or teaching staff at least) who know the school inside out. As we've seen, a few teachers do come on this site, and they seem to think it's a really good thing. Keep it up!
As goes for the original topic of this particular discussion, I know I'm just completely and utterly stating the obvious, but I'm just reiterating that all members of staff know this sort of thing happens, and very, very few go out of their way to walk around bigside at the dead of night to try to catch as many people as possible; and I'm sure the overwhelming majority of parents accept, reluctantly or not, that when away from home, their kids are of course going to be more independent and will do things of which their parents may not approve.
As for the more trivial point of swearing, I totally agree with whomever said it, that all 11 year olds have heard whatever swearwords 16 or 18 yearolds use; they just don't use them in front of their parents...but I'd hope anyone of any age tries not to f and blind in front of their parents, no? So what's the big deal?

tobeconfirmed · Post by **tobeconfirmed** » Thu May 05, 2005 9:20 pm

We should not take the school's actions too finally: they even banned the Greenpeace website.

PS, Greenpeace must surely have the most inaccurate name ever. Some of their protestors and protests are anything but peaceful - infact a minority can be classified as violent thugs who enjoy breaching the peace!

Post by **jtaylor** » Thu May 05, 2005 9:49 pm

Thanks for all the feedback - based on this, we'll leave things as they are and keep going. Seems overall positive for the tone and condour of the content, which is good.
Regarding contacting the school re. the filtering - please trust that I'm on the case at the moment, judging the right approach to hopefully sell the benefit/purpose of the forum.

If I make any progress, I'll people know.
I've heard a number of reasons for the filtering - ranging from the content (which was hastily removed), through to the Children's Act, through to it being a default rule about chat-rooms and discussion forums.
Regardless of the actual reason, we need to persuade the school that it's an overwhelmingly positive thing for Grecians to be allowed to get involved, equivaleng of persuading a parent....they are in-loco-parentis after all!

J

lvesey · Post by **lvesey** » Fri May 06, 2005 1:05 am

PARENTS: None of this stuff goes on, it's just bragging. Everything's warm and fluffy.

That should sort it out.

Julian, good call in raising the question first. I think if I was a parent I'd rather that my kids were finding out what makes a hangover, within the confines of the school, instead of in some shoddy chav filled wetherspoons.

rebel · Post by **rebel** » Fri May 06, 2005 8:13 am

I looked in here out of curiosity only because everything said is so outside any experience we had - not a drop to drink so to speak - although of course there wasn't booze everywhere - I don't think even the staff had it - along with any other pleasures. Perhaps that's why they were so joyless.

Getting confirmed got us a sip every so often if we could get up in time to go to early morning chapel on Sundays. But I am wondering how you all managed such excesses re the law. Isn't there an age limit any more?
SOunds like CH now is on another planet than the place I went to.

Sad to say the early training in temperance only served to make us try to catch up later on. Now, how about a thread on the worst OB drunken experience in the old folks home?(I'm not quite there yet but would like some hint of what's to come.)

As for freedom of speech, this doesn't mean unlimited freedom to most people because the results can be worse and eventually cause more regulation. We now have laws against hate speeches because people were too free with their vicious words and didn't regulate themselves.

Richard Ruck · Post by **Richard Ruck** » Sat May 07, 2005 1:01 pm

Hendrik wrote:
It was mentioned that the problem was something to do with glorifying bullying. Why, then, does CH continue to employ (some) staff who openly hold the belief that bullying does improve your life?

An interesting and serious point. Are there really staff who condone such behaviour? That's worth a discussion, surely?

As for dealing with these subjects, I really don't think they should be hidden away. As James suggested, when we were at CH such matters were rightly or wrongly seen as a sort of 'rite of passage'. Serious bullying was not really tolerated at all. In many instances, peer pressure would deal with the problem before the 'authorities' had to get involved.

I personally had no problem with someone trying to justify some past act of bullying. As I think I said elsewhere, it seems to me that such an attitude reflects on the person proposing it, not on the forum and especially not on C.H., although I can see why people might be nervous about it. To be honest, worse things can be seen on television or in the printed media. If someone wants to make an arse of themselves on a public forum, then let them go ahead.

I have to say that had such a forum as this been available when I was a Grecian, I would have enjoyed the discussions, would not have been tempted to go away and bully someone merely because another poster said that it was OK, and, importantly, realised that Old Blues were not just a bunch of people who came and watched the band once a year, but a community of which I could have been a part on leaving school and continuously thereafter.

By the way - James, if you're reading this, I bumped into your old housemaster at the Bax last Sunday, looking very dapper. I recall that, for us lot next door in Mid.B, he always seemed to run your house like some sort of prison camp and we always thought he was a bit of a sh1t, but, having seen him in the pub from time to time over the years, he seems like a really nice bloke.

Perhaps he just didn't like the hooligans next door.....

By the way, just previewed this post, and would like to point out that it was the automatic filter that put the "1" in the word "sh1t", not me. I would never be so prissy.

How quaint! I suppose this means that no-one will know what I actually wrote.....

Post by **jtaylor** » Sat May 07, 2005 1:30 pm

Richard Ruck wrote: By the way, just previewed this post, and would like to point out that it was the automatic filter that put the "1" in the word "sh1t", not me. I would never be so prissy.

How quaint! I suppose this means that no-one will know what I actually wrote.....

The filtering of "sh1t" is simply to prevent some content filters from the filtering the page - some of these off-the-shelf content filters prevent the display of any page which contains swear words of any sort - keeps the meaning, without causing filtering problems!
Some other words are filtered to all stars....

J

Richard Ruck · Post by **Richard Ruck** » Sat May 07, 2005 1:38 pm

jtaylor wrote:
Richard Ruck wrote: By the way, just previewed this post, and would like to point out that it was the automatic filter that put the "1" in the word "sh1t", not me. I would never be so prissy.

How quaint! I suppose this means that no-one will know what I actually wrote.....
The filtering of "sh1t" is simply to prevent some content filters from the filtering the page - some of these off-the-shelf content filters prevent the display of any page which contains swear words of any sort - keeps the meaning, without causing filtering problems!
Some other words are filtered to all stars....

J

Aha, now I know. Sorry, this technical sh1t is a bit beyond me....

JamesF35 · Post by **JamesF35** » Sat May 07, 2005 6:02 pm

Richard Ruck wrote:By the way - James, if you're reading this, I bumped into your old housemaster at the Bax last Sunday, looking very dapper. I recall that, for us lot next door in Mid.B, he always seemed to run your house like some sort of prison camp and we always thought he was a bit of a sh1t, but, having seen him in the pub from time to time over the years, he seems like a really nice bloke.

Perhaps he just didn't like the hooligans next door.....

Thanks Richard, I keep on meaning to get in touch with him and now I know he's fit and well I'll make the effort. Yes Ron did have an interesting way of running the house and I had my run-ins over the years. He was essentially a great guy though. I actually went on holiday with him to Eastern Europe the summer we left the school. Hooligans . . . . mmmmm, maybe you're right !

Richard Ruck · Post by **Richard Ruck** » Sat May 07, 2005 8:55 pm

I see that sh1t has now been added to the list of naughty words.

Well b****r me!