[3103] in Depressing_Thoughts

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Re: Remind me again why I didn't go Course VI...

sipb7@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sipb7@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Jun 11 21:25:06 1992

Follow-up file: I talked with the Dean today, and I have officially
Beaten The Rap.  (I was at MIT all last night, and then I came home to
find a message from her on my machine, asking me to come in for work.)
I told her I couldn't come in to work tonight, and asked her to set up
an appointment for me with the school counselor on Monday, so I can
get *my* head adjusted.

Fred has been suspended for school for three days, and the school
administration will meet with him and his parents to discuss how to
prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

>Have you seriously thought about whether you *want* to go back to work
>there?  You should.

I can't complain too much about how the school administration handled
the case.  Reporting to the DSS is required by law; if school
officials had discretion over which cases to report, plenty of them
would abuse that discretion, to keep themselves from looking bad.  And
as I said earlier, files of people found innocent are completely
destroyed.

>I mean, suppose the kid had called, say, Mike "Slimey" Barnickel...

Point taken; I will talk with the school counselor about how to best
protect my professional reputation.

But remember, the students I work with are clinically "emotionally
disturbed" -- if they were always conspicuously brave, honest, loyal,
trustworthy, clean, faithful, and reverent, they wouldn't be living
where they are now.

My roommate used to work in a hospital psychiatric ward, with clients
who make Fred look like a Buddhist monk by comparison.  He was accused of
abuse several times, and cleared every time.  He can still find work.

>I'm not the first person to observe that these days, [being accused] of
>child abuse is like being called a witch in colonial Salem.

True.  On the other hand, many people will take the word of a
Certified Mental Health Professional over that of a Certified Mentally
Ill Person -- even when they shouldn't.

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