Randy_Watson

Ironically, the school banned the book 1984 after an English teacher assigned it and many students began seeing certain parallels and acting out.

Gzasmyhero provided the break through that was necessary. However, there have been many sites that were critical and are now gone (funny how all critical information seemed to disappear). There was a really good one called Elan Survivors and a few others. The push to have this place get investigated and shut down has been pretty constant. However, the truth is, it's easy to chase it down the rabbit hole and let your life become consumed by it. So, a lot of the time people spend a year or 18 months obsessed and then walk away. That's what happened to me. I just figured it would never get shut down and decided I wouldn't let it take any more of my life. Elan had avoided close scrutiny for years despite investigations. What's sad is that it took this long.

Wow, that's a lot. I'll define as many as possible. I'm going to define them in a different order because understanding what one thing is will help you understand another.

• BO, CM, SC, KC, X's - When you got there you were assigned to a house. The students worked jobs within the house. You had to work your way up through the jobs as part of the program. There were 4 "crews" - Business Office (BO), Communications (CM), Service Crew (SC) and Kitchen (KC). They all had different responsibilities. Service crew was in charge of cleaning, maintenance, and making sure things like the bathroom were stocked. X's was short for Expediter Staff. In truth, it meant security. For example, during the day there were five zones that each had an expediter assigned to them to guard and watch over. There was also always one expediter that did headcounts all day long. Everyone was counted every 10 minutes. In general, the people that did this were lower level expediters.

• Booking an incident - If you saw someone breaking the rules you went to the SOD (Shingle on Duty), a member of the expediter crew in charge of "the book". You tell them who it was and what they did. The SOD take the incident and brings it to staff. They read it and do what is called gearing an incident. The incident was then passed on to a student coordinator who would deal with the incident and then it would be passed back to the SOD to be recorded in the book. There were usually around 200 incidents a day. Expediters could also book incidents on zones.

• Dealing Crews - To deal with an incident, a dealing crew is convened. It consists of a high level coordinator and 2-3 other students that are equal or higher rank. You knock on a door and are told to come in. You stand there while the dealing crew sits in front of you. The coordinator reads off the incidents that were booked. The staff has written either VR (Verbal Reprimand) or TT (Talking to) or both. Once the incident is read, the dealing crew starts with the coordinator yelling at you in a weird cadenced way about what you did wrong and why that is bad. Each person takes a turn in order. When it is done, if the staff added an LE (learning experience) you are told what it is. An LE was a punishment. It might be to GI (scrub) a toilet or the floor or something like that.

• Bright LE - If you were considered a runaway risk you had to wear bright clothing.

• Being in the corner - When a kid acted out really bad, they were put in the corner. They had to sit in a room separate from everyone else and face the corner all day long. Some people stayed in for days. I saw one kid basically stay for a month.

• General Meeting - This was a meeting where you were stood in front of the house and everyone got to "get their feelings off". What this meant was a broomstick was put in front of the person. It was the line the other students couldn't cross. They were then told to get their feelings off. Basically, everyone ran up there and crowded the person and started screaming and swearing at them at the top of their lungs. Usually you had 5 or 6 people going at a time and this stopped when everyone was finished. A general meeting would be called if you did something really wrong, but were very common.

• House Meeting - Similar to a general meeting, but without people getting their feelings off. It was more of a humiliation thing and was done for lesser infractions.

• Pulling - This meant staying up on night security all night.

• House in the dining room - This was the call for everyone to drop everything and go to the dining room. For example, if there was going to be a general meeting someone would yell "House in the dining room, general meeting."

• "Be Aware" - Like I said, everyone had jobs. With each new jobs you got new privileges. For the first few levels of jobs you were considered "non-strength", after that "strength", and after that "high-strength". If you were in a non-strength position you were not allowed to talk to other non-strenght students without someone in a strength position listening. For them to listen you would ask them to "be aware".

I will continue this in another post.

I'm sorry. If you ever need to talk to someone, drop me a line. When were you there?

• Shotdown - This was the lowest position. It actually meant you had no job. All you did all day was scrub floors with breaks for meals, groups, and school. Otherwise you sat in the dining room, or sometimes the bathroom and scrubbed. They also took your shoelaces and made you wear bright clothing.

• GI Movie - We watched movies at night on the weekends. If you got a GI movie, you didn't get to watch it and instead had to scrub the floor through the whol thing.

• Strength sodas - You got sodas once a week or maybe a day, I can't remember, if you were of a strength level position.

• Little red school house - ? - Maybe these were the trailers where we had some of our classes.

• "With eagerness of spirit we shall find ourselves through knowing others..." - This was the opening line of the Elan philosophy. We read it every night.

• 4 Minute Showers - The length of time we were allowed to shower.

• The lake - Elan's campus is on a lake. On the weekends during the summer, we were allowed to go to the lake for one hour.

• Weekend trips - As you gained privileges you got to take weekend trips. One position might get a trip once per month, another twice. By the time you got to the top, you got a trip per week. That's also because you had to chaperon it. If someone ran away, it was your ass. The trips were to places like the movies. You didn't get to decide what trip you went on.

• Rec trips - This was only during the summer. Randomly as a reward you were taken out on a trip during the day, in the middle of the week. You might go fishing or bike riding. Stuff like that.

• House trips - These happened rarely, but at least once a year. The whole house would go on a day trip somewhere. I remember one time they took us to Boston to see a bruins game. Another time, they took the entire school to see Titanic. That one was weird. We were so shut off from the world that we didn't really know about the phenomenon of that movie. Randomly, the staff decided we should all go see it.

• Dorm changes - We lived in dorm rooms with 4-6 people per room. Every weekend we had dorm changes where people would move to different beds. Higher level people only had to change like once a month. Lower level people every week.

• Lights out - Bed time was midnight. Lights out was 1130.

• "Chief!" - If someone attacked you, or a kid was trying to run away, or you were put in danger in some manner, you screamed "Chief!" Then the person who was the position of chief-expediter and probably the coordinator of expediters would run help you. If it was a runaway, they would chase after that person.

• SP - Support person - An SP sat with kids in the corner and watched them. An SP was also assigned when you went on visits to watch you as well.

• Seconds are passed in dichotomy meant that second helpings at meals were given out in order of the hierarchy high to low.

whew. That was a lot.