"On the Waterfront" and Ratting Out My Peers

It's a new month, which means I have a new old film recommendation on Rednow. It's for the movie On the Waterfront, and you can read what I say about it by clicking here.

This isn't quite It's a Wonderful Life or A Christmas Story, but if you get tired of feeling like you're supposed to be happy in the December gloom, this movie will fit that mood.

Now here's a confession to accompany the film. I lived on a floor of guys in college one year that named themselves the "mad dogs." We behaved like the 19-year-old boys that we were. At the end of one semester a commission of sorts was formed of governing officials in our dorm. Their mission was to find out who had damaged various ceiling tiles and door frames in the building. They were focused on a couple of the mad dogs in particular. I was brought into a room in the basement of our dorm by this official body and asked who had done the damage. I told them I did not know. I told them I'd heard the same sorts of stories everyone else had heard, but since I was not an eyewitness to what they were asking about, I wasn't going to say anything.

Did I believe the stories I had heard? There was no reason to doubt them. And I had seen other things, but they weren't asking about those things and I wasn't going to volunteer any information. I wasn't going to be a rat. Being a rat, as I point out in the commentary I did for On the Waterfront, was as bad as committing the crime.

One of the people asking the questions said, "We know you're a good kid, the kind who tells the truth. Tell us what happened." That made me feel guilty, but still didn't compel me to talk. One reason I wasn't compelled to talk was because I seriously wondered what the rest of the guys in my dorm would do to me if I did talk. I don't think I would have been physically injured (but wasn't 100% certain of that), but I was sure I'd be socially cast out.

I think of those pressures when I read all the self-righteous talk around the Penn State scandal. I realize there is no comparing the relatively victimless crime of damaging ceiling tiles to child abuse, but the pressures on the whistleblower would be the same. To tell what you know about something means kissing the system you are in goodbye. Whether it's a job, a college dorm, a church or even a family, to "name names" means your involvement there is done. Think of that pressure when you wonder why the graduate assistant at Penn State didn't do more. Systems put enormous pressure on people.

I have sympathy with those who have the strength to come forward and talk. As On the Waterfront illustrates, you'll take a beating if you do. But you'll take a different sort of beating if you don't. There is seldom a clear path. Most often we choose what appears to be the best of a number of bad options.