The New York Times’ agrees with me that comments about drinking and drug use at Berkeley Carroll (and at schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan) were unsubstantiated and should not have been included in the article, Our Year Is the Most Competitive Year in the History of College Applications. Or Something Like That."
Did you see the City Section piece by
David Helene, a 17-year old Packer student, who lives in Cobble Hill?
Wonder what they thought of it over at Berkeley Carroll? I guess it’s
just one kid’s opinion but it seemed pretty ridiculous to me. Wonder
why the Times’ kept it in?
Well, the Times’ is now saying that the quote SHOULD NOT have been included. I kinda knew that. Here’s the Tmes’ correction or something like that.
A first-person article last Sunday, based on a transcription of an
interview with a 17-year-old who lives in Brooklyn and attends Packer
Collegiate Institute, included comments by the teenager that there were
drinking at the Berkeley Carroll School in Park Slope, and drug use at
Berkeley Carroll and at schools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Those remarks were unsubstantiated and based in part on hearsay, and
should not have been included in the article.
Oh, please. Are we going to pretend that as parents, we’re shocked — SHOCKED! — that drinking and drug use occurs amongst high school students? Granted, the Packer student’s comments were clearly based on stereotypes, and taken out of context. And I’m quite certain there is no heroin use at Brearley! But the Times’ response was to print an apology that wasn’t really an apology. I can just imagine the editors sitting around saying, “Okay, how can we word this editorial note in such a way to make it clear that we’re only printing it because some parents complained?”
Frankly, I think this was all much ado about nothing. And I say this as the mother of a former Berkeley Carroll student and current Brearley student! The real issue, as Brearley’s Head of School put it in her letter to the editor, is how young people today must learn to cope with a predatory, voyeuristic media that is less concerned with facts than it is with stereotypes and gossip. As the daughter of a former Times editor and writer, all I can say is that this isn’t my father’s New York Times.
Both the student and the headmaster of his school issued an apology for the remarks made in that article. Needless to say, officials at BCS and Brearley were up in arms after publication of the piece. Private school kids harbor all sorts of impressions about other schools…this kid was just unfortunate enough to have been quoted voicing this inaccurate impression.