Timmy and the Blue Whale Party

Let's go back in time.

Back in the fall of 1985 I was a student at one of SUNY's finer institutions of learning. I was 21 at the time and the floor of my dorm was all guys. So one can imagine the debauchery and alcohol consumption was pretty nice.

I remember the first night well on that floor. We had a party in Henry and Abdul's room. Nothing much, just beer and about 20 guests. The only problem was, that at the time if you were serving alcohol in your room, the rule was there were to be no more than 8 people in the room. Unfortunately, we all got busted by Timmy the resident assistant on patrol that night.

We tried to plead our case to the resident director. We told him that when Timmy popped his head in the suite no one was actually drinking beer. The RD countered with that while that might be true, how else can we explain the 200 empties of Labatt's, Blatz, and Stroh's strewn about.

We all got disciplined. Letters or whatever. But we were warned. It was not to happen again. Not a problem. We were going to toe the line.

Later that fall semester some of the guys decided to have a Blue Whale party. A Blue Whale was like a blue Kamakaze and you would put a plastic liner in a garbage can, mix the drink and serve.

That night I was out on a date, or at the school's tavern, when I came back to the dorm. There were already 8 people in the room and I just stopped by to say hello having already consumed copious amounts of beer that night.

 I never entered the room at all. I was standing in the door, my toes not even in the room. I was just shooting the shit with the guys when all of the sudden Timmy the RA popped his head in. "You're all busted," he shouted at us. We couldn't believe it. Where did Timmy come from?

Apparently Timmy, whilst on his patrol, heard us through the closed door of the suite. He opened the door quite silently and pounced. We had one too many, that being me, people in the room with booze being avaialble. We were up the proverbial shit's creek.

A week or so later we all had to face some dorm hearing justice before a board of inquisitors. We were thisclose to getting kicked out of the dorm. I never worried for just before the hearing I delivered a pizza to the a RD, who was to be on the hearing committee, at another dorm. Since he thought our RD was a dick, the fix was in. We all got super secret probation and that was it.

The reason I write this is the "gotcha" assholery of Timmy reminds me too much of what we see from administrators in the DOE today. Timmy was drunk with power, as are the administrators we deal with each and every day in our schools, especially one's that feel they can LEAD as Friends of Irma.

These so called "LEADers" are Timmy. Nothing more than inept LEADers who wish that they can truly lead. Since they lack any qualities, any morals, any independent thought, they can only rule by the machinations of those controlling their strings from above.

These LEADers fail to look at themselves in the mirror and see that they might be the problem, that their lack of leadership skills must be what is damaging a school. As with Timmy, these LEADers have zero self worth and by only rigidly thinking that they know it all, that by not listening to other opinions, other voices, other points of view, they can only move a school in one direction, into the crapper.

These LEADers, like Timmy will be your friend, act as if they are concerned about you, but in the end, they will lull you into a false sense of security and when they can, when you least expect it, pounce on you and do what they can to ruin you. These LEADers are sheeps in wolves clothing, a trojan horse.

But what to be done? I took care of Timmy and the bad ass RD in our dorm. The fix was in. I stuck up for my friends in my dorm. Teachers in each school with these Friends of Irma, these LEADers must fight, must stand up not only for themselves, but for each teacher in their school.

In true unity, can we subvert the bogus Unity that only hides it's head in the sand.