Re:Columbine Ghostbusters

Ghost busters
James Brody
April 28, 1999

This IS about evolution.

Pennhurst was a residential facility for 1500 mentally retarded adults, operated by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania when I landed a job there in 1973. She was also an old whore with bad breath who charged a lot of money. The residents were beaten by other residents ad sometimes by staff. Staff often sat and gossiped instead of knowing where clients were or what they were doing.

There was a decade of trying to clean her up during the next decade of litigation. Federal surveyors stimulated the growth of the records system from single empty manila folders to twin binders on each client. Uniforms vanished, the Nursing Department noisily sank, lots of professionals came aboard, buildings were renovated and abuse continued even while homeostatic costs went up.

The diseased madam was retired in about 1986 after the clients had been dispersed to small (n = 4-8 per house) community facilities, workshops grew for more meaningful daily activity and some of the grand promises about "habilitation" quietly vanished.

Pennhurst "made it" to the United States Supreme Court; the Commonwealth defended the case only to the extent needed to avoid personal damage assessments against staff and against itself. Pennhurst was costing too much and closure was cheaper and more humane. Homeostatic costs won.

The suits were started by litigious, angry parents and eventually merged into a class action; the parents wanted better outcomes for their children and the formal complaints included violations of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of United States Constitution.

1) Each resident was at Pennhurst involuntarily, despite the paperwork, because Pennhurst was their only available placement.

2) They were also at significant risk during their stay.

3) There was no compensatory, individualized, habilitative program in exchange for the client's loss of freedom and exposure to risk.

Ancillary issues were:

1) The increased documentation as demanded by Federal Long Term Care Surveyors demonstrated client needs and also demonstrated that Pennhurst wasn't meeting them. (Achievement scores anyone?) The habilitative programs were paper shams, and inevitably would be, in a congregate setting.

2) Increased staff ratios had no effect on client care or progress and it was apparent that large group placements are inherently ineffective.
These are still civil rights violations, prosecutable by the United States Department of Justice. Further, civil rights violations have NO immunity from personal damages and NO statute of limitations.

There are ghosts in this note and you should know them.
-- People used to die at Pennhurst where the empty buildings and tunnels still draw rats and rumored drug addicts and souvenir hunters.
-- My former boss, James C. Hirst, Ph.D., was Chief Psychologist and a key instigator of the suit and spent several years in administrative coventry for whatever his complex motives. He also committed suicide in a bout of depression after Pennhurst closed.
-- There are the ghosts of children killed at Columbine.
-- Finally, there are the future ghosts of living children, ghosts of the adults that might have been had their niches offered different choices for growth.

The issues for public education are identical to those of Pennhurst. They involve the lack of protection from harm, involuntary commitment to 4 years' of irrelevant activity for many, and the lack of a free, appropriate public education --- a right thought to have been guaranteed by Public Law 94-142, itself a phoenix from Pennhurst and the Consent Agreement between the Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens and the Commonwealth, signed decades before.

School officials will sometimes blame 94-142 --- the very law they often violate --- and their inability to expel disruptive students for the harm done to other students. However, it appears:

-- Schools try primarily to expel students who are disruptive to teachers and disruptions to other students are tolerated. (It was that way at Pennhurst.)
-- They will point to the expensive chem lab or computer support but neglect the absence and impossibility of social education in the halls or the mismatch between niche and aptitudes that exists for many students. (The workshop at Pennhurst WAS pretty good.)
-- After all, the top 5% of students do pretty well, why close the place? (And the ghosts? What of them?)
-- "We have so much expertise in this one place that amateurs could never match." (A 10 yo can work the internet! The community alternatives to Pennhurst were staffed by a large element of college students who worked for lots less money and followed their instincts but did a better job.
-- "We LOVE teaching." (Every Pennhurst staff member had a similar nurturance in their first weeks of employment but immediately discovered their true choice --- take the money and give up their ideals to work in an impossible situation or leave. Many left; many stayed because they were paid more than they could earn elsewhere.)
-- The "union" will raise hell. (It did.)

Somebody drop the dime.

Copyright, James Brody 1999

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