Why Do Guys Like Kavanaugh Act Like This? Privileged Rich Boys’ Misdeeds Fueled by Alcohol

Like Deborah Ramirez, who recently came forward with an account of being sexually assaulted by privileged white boy Brett Kavanaugh, I worked in a Yale residential college dining room, clearing tables and loading the dish washer. I also cleaned dorm rooms and mopped stairwells in preparation for summertime class reunions.

Americans who have been following the story of Christine Blase Ford’s accusation of a sexual assault by teenager Kavanaugh through TV news and popular media may not have heard details of Ramirez’s account of her victimization by what the New York Times called Yale College’s 1980s “alcohol-infused culture.”

A sexual assault by a male undergraduate on a female undergraduate would not have happened during my years at Yale. I can say that with complete confidence for the simple reason because Yale did not admit female undergraduates until the year after I graduated.

But another truth about Yale, and dormitory life in all other residential colleges in my era that argues against the existence of sexual assaults is that American campuses in the late 60s and 1970s were not dominated by an “alcohol-infused culture.”

Just as they do today, and will always do, undergraduates then gathered in dorm rooms and off-campus apartments, holding parties and late night b.s. sessions. We shared experiences, told stories, explored friendships, stayed up way too late, blew off studying, complained about our professors teaching assistants. And just as we did, college kids today goof off playing games and stay up late discussing the hot topics of politics, sex, and drugs.

But in 1983 when, as Debbie Ramirez credibly asserts, privileged-preppie freshman Kavanaugh waved his penis in her face, the drug of choice was alcohol.

Back in my day and throughout the 70s, the drug of choice was pot. A fair amount of experimenting with psychedelic substances took place as well. This behavior may raise concerns — as it certainly did back in those day.

But one thing people stoned on marijuana did not do was assault other human beings. Nothing about the drug’s effect makes you wish to lose your social (and moral) inhibitions and abuse other human beings for the perverse egotistical gratifications such behavior appears to promise a drink-deluded consciousness.

For a period of time fortunate young people in America — those of us lucky enough to go to college — were free of the rich-boy “rape culture” that helped create nasty little ego-monsters like frat-house pig-in-diapers Brett Kavanaugh.

We smoked dope, listened to music, shared thoughts and experiences, hated the Vietnam War, and discussed how to live so as not to turn into people like Brett Kavanaugh. Or like the people who brought us Vietnam and Watergate.

If you have not encountered the details on mainstream media (and I suspect most people have not), here is, in part, what Deborah Ramirez told The New Yorker magazine last week.

“After six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorney, Ramirez said that she felt confident enough of her recollections to say that she remembers Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party, thrust his penis in her face, and caused her to touch it without her consent as she pushed him away. Ramirez is now calling for the F.B.I. to investigate Kavanaugh’s role in the incident.”

To quote further from The New Yorker article: “Brett was laughing,” [Ramirez] said. “I can still see his face, and his hips coming forward, like when you pull up your pants…. Somebody yelled down the hall, ‘Brett Kavanaugh just put his penis in Debbie’s face’ ”… And I remember hearing and being mortified that this was out there.”

The article also quotes a classmate of Kavanaugh’s, who said he was shocked when told of the incident “but not necessarily surprised, because the social group to which Kavanaugh belonged often drank to excess.”

That’s a good caption for the 1980s social milieu at Yale and other American colleges: a party scene in which participants “often drank to excess.” Unfortunately, that description may still fit.

Finally The New Yorker quotes the same classmate’s characterization of Kavanaugh “as ‘relatively shy’ until he drank, at which point Kavanaugh could become ‘aggressive and even belligerent.’”

That’s booze for you, when you ‘drink to excess.’ Particularly if you’re young and male. [Find the New Yorker story at: https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/senate-democrats-investigate-a-new-allegation-of-sexual-misconduct-from-the-supreme-court-nominee-brett-kavanaughs-college-years-deborah-ramirez ]

To be clear, most of us, if we’re adults, drink something. We drink beer, wine, bourbon, champagne, gin and tonic. Alcohol is a drug most of us can handle in moderation, and most of us avoid excess. For some people, drinking poses a lifelong challenge, and maintaining sobriety is a lifelong battle.

But most people do not feel the need to create what the New York Times, in its story about Ramirez’s experience, bluntly called the “alcohol-infused culture” of the college campus

The Times story, published Monday (Sept. 24), emphasized the differences in background between Kavanaugh and Ramirez, pointing out that they came “from worlds apart.”

While Kavanaugh grew up in a wealthy background and attended an exclusive preparatory school stocked with mirror images of white male wealth and power, Debbie Ramirez (the Times reports) “arrived at the rarefied halls of Yale from Shelton, Conn., a town just 30 minutes away, the daughter of a telephone company lineman and a medical technician.” She attended a coed Catholic high school. Her father was Puerto Rican.

And then here is the account of her Yale experience that sounded familiar to me: “At college Ms. Ramirez put in long hours working at a residential dining hall and cleaning dorm rooms ahead of class reunions, common jobs for students who had to scrape together money for tuition.”

I was a kid from a modest family background — no wealth, no fancy private school, no legacy forbears — when Yale decided to accept my application and offer a needs-based scholarship package sufficient for me to attend a costly private college. Before my freshman year I could probably count the nights I had slept away from home. Compared to most of my Yale peers I felt — and was — innocent, unsophisticated, awkward, shy and un-privileged.

But unlike Debby Ramirez, I was not a female, and not preyed upon. Snubbed, ignored and perhaps underestimated at times, I found my ‘people’ (as we say today) and kept well away from the college’s rich-kid frat house element. (The name George W. Bush comes to mind.)

And that was easy to do because that element did not dominate in my college years. The only “assaults” I witnessed were by civil and military authorities on anti-war demonstrators. The only violence I experienced stemmed from an incautious attempt to drive my roommate’s motorcycle. Our dormitories were largely peaceful environments, except for noise levels produced by the playing of psychedelic records. Steam was let off by competitive matches at the foosball table. The competition for rare female companionship was carried on in that traditional arena, the dance floor. (Some of us went off-campus on weekends to see a girl friend.) Friendship rituals were generally signaled by the lighting of a match.

The world, and the college campus, had changed (and not, in my opinion, for the better) by the time Deborah Ramirez arrived at Yale’s Old Campus in 1983. The Times story quotes her undergraduate roommate Elizabeth Swisher, who found Ramirez “very innocent coming into college” and recalled that “I felt an obligation early in freshman year to protect her.”

But why should new students, regardless of gender, require protection? From other students?

Why should the sense of obligation Swisher felt for her roommate be standard operating procedure for undergraduate women?

Because, it appears, colleges and universities won’t face up to their responsibility to perform this task — maintaining a safe space — for the most vulnerable members of their community, the young people they charge a lot of money for the privilege of enrolling there.

It’s bad enough that prestigious private colleges promote social snobbery and wealth-based class distinctions, as private educational institutions always will. But what colleges and prestigious preparatory secondary schools should not provide is a protective hideout — and legal cover — for sexually predatory behavior.

What they must do now is to take serious steps to prevent criminal assaults. That includes investigating all claims and publicly acknowledging when they have occurred, and how they were addressed, rather than trying to sweep them under the rug as bad publicity.

Bad publicity comes from coddling sexual predators who seek to be called by the mind-bendingly ironic title of “Justice.” Just ask Yale University, now making front-page news with student protests of institutional support for Kavanaugh.

Colleges and universities should be disciplining students for public drunkenness and expelling them for aggressive, alcohol-induced behavior. They should be monitoring frats or any societies that receive any official recognition from them and closing down any such bodies that promote binge drinking.

Kids quietly getting high on a drug of choice, whether smoked or imbibed? Ignore them, so long as they respect other people’s rights and behave civilly. That means no toleration for harassment of women, minorities, or any ‘others’ for their backgrounds or lifestyle choices.

Colleges that can’t maintain a safe, civil and unthreatening public environment for their students should face a penalty that will really hurt — the loss of their tax-exempt status.