The Next Seven
I want to write about seven men.
I want to talk about the culture that created two situations in the news that involve seven men.
I also want to talk about group dynamics and power structures.
But mostly I want to talk about conditions that lead to having to talk about seven men. I want to talk about how when we don’t talk about the kinds of things that led to seven men being in the news we help to create those situations. I want to talk about shame and guilt, about bullying and bystanders. I want to write about the reasons that young people take their own lives. I want to talk about all of it but I don’t want to write from a place of authority, I want to talk to you about it like I’m a mom. I am a mom. To three boys. Not like a professor with measured tones, not as an expert with organized paragraphs. Just a mom who has a vantage point not so unlike other moms. I want to talk about it because it is all I’ve been thinking about.
I lock in on numbers, on patterns. I do it to find comfort. I do it to find signs. I want to know I’m on the right track so I look for signs. I create signs at times, we all do. This week the sign is seven.
Seven men at Cornell. Seven men at ASU. Seven men at Cornell accused of a heinous crime. Seven hockey players at ASU finally stepped up to say enough about a situation that has left one of their own hospitalized with injuries he probably won’t recover from.
Both are shocking.
Both tell a story.
A story of group dynamics. Group dynamics that say speaking up can cost you.
For years now, I have been a part of or adjacent to an organization that talks about loneliness. We say, it only takes seven seconds to reach out to someone and let them know you care. So seven rings in my ears when I hear it.
So the seven at Cornell and the seven at ASU were like a tuning fork.
The things I have been reading about the Cornell fraternity are horrific. The response has been clear–yes we need to teach our daughters to be safe but more importantly we need to teach our sons to be the type of men that say something, step in, do something when a situation arises. I completely agree and we know this is not isolated. Sexual assault is a problem. A widespread problem.
Mirror that conversation onto the Hockey team here at ASU. An athlete collapsed and is in the hospital. He most likely will not recover. While I work at ASU, I only know what has been reported. There has been an investigation and practices have continued. Games start soon. After the results of the investigation, seven men, seven young men, seven athletes at the top of their game, wrote a letter asking for more. They want the coaches to be put on leave and the investigation reopened. They are now stepping up, they are saying something, but they didn’t feel like they could in real time. They can’t even do it with their names attached, as they note in their letter, because they fear for their positions, their scholarships, their playing time.
You may not make the leap from one to the other like I do. You might not see it, but it is as clear as day to me. There are consequences to doing the right thing every day and stepping up and pointing that out is harder than we think.
I made the leap because no one in either situation actually did say anything when it mattered. It is hard to think about. It is hard to imagine our own children not doing the right thing.
I’m an educator by trade and I see it start early. Boys push girls around and talk over them in elementary school. Hell, they push each other around. We try to teach them to handle the situations with words, with support from adults, but at some point we say to them, to all of them, are you telling or tattling? We send the message that we need them to know the difference and if they get it wrong somehow the ones stepping up are the problem. So they figure it out. They deal with it. Sometimes that looks like physical altercations but more often than not, from my perspective, we teach them to shut up about it.
I am not making the argument that recess behavior in elementary school begets rape in Ivy League schools nor am I saying that youth sports causes situations where kids feel like they can’t speak up for fear of reprisal. But I’m also not, not saying that.
It is not a one-to-one-to-one situation. But I do think our quick solutions, like “say something,” skip over all the steps it takes to actually do that: noticing, naming, trusting yourself, knowing who to tell, believing help will come, and surviving what happens after.
We have to teach these lessons and then teach them again. We have to model standing up, speaking up, saying something. We have to talk about situations in our own lives where we do it and we have to show that there are positive consequences and negative. We have to model that bad things happen when you do the right thing and still the right thing is the path to choose. And we aren’t always going to get it right.
And we have to do that over and over again.
I had a mom once come into my principal’s office and scream at me because she thought her son was being bullied by another boy at recess. It was good speaking up, but she was wrong, it was actually her son that was systematically going after other kids and this one had had enough and struck back. They were young, ten maybe, I couldn’t get through to the mom. I imagine her son now and wonder what he learned–did he feel like he got away with something or did he ever figure out that his behavior had consequences. I wonder about him a lot.
I wonder about all of them because we are living in a hard time. A time when we don’t say no a lot, set high expectations, or lean into accountability. And yet we ask them to stand up for what is right.
How do you hold both of these things at the same time, speak up for what is right when what is right is often negotiated. Often it depends on who is in power.
It is complicated. Always. And it shouldn’t be.
One day someone posted on Facebook that their son had tripped and fallen getting to school, his instrument and backpack went flying. Another boy stopped to help. That other boy was one of my sons. He never said anything about it because for him it wasn’t special, you help others. Not to get a thanks, not to be recognized, but because you see a need. Sometimes it is simple.
Stay with me, I’m going to take another turn that might feel big.
What does this have to do with only seven seconds and loneliness? Well, first, taking only seven seconds to reach out is just the first best step, but after seven seconds, you have to do more. You have to connect someone to help, provide resources, sometimes be a better friend, sometimes have the hard conversations. Sometimes it takes a professional, sometimes a deep soul connection. Sometimes it is simple–making the connection; and sometimes it is complicated.
And sometimes it takes accountability. Sometimes we have to admit that we have done something wrong, we have wronged someone and we need to fix a situation. Shame and guilt show up a lot in lonely.
I worry about the boy who was bullying in elementary school. I worry that he learned he can do whatever he wants. I also want to have empathy for him. And I worry that he regrets his behavior and now feels alone.
And that is where my brain is right now, I keep thinking about the next seven. Not the seven named in Cornell. Not the seven that wrote the letter at ASU. The others. The rest. Feeling like you could have said something, done something, is a hard truth to hold onto when someone has been injured. Feeling helpless is a hard truth to admit. Regret is real.
As a mom, just a mom, what I would like to say to my sons is that I want you to be the people that stand up, speak up, say something, but I also know there will be times when you don’t know how to do that. I am here, Dad is here, and there are other adults you can trust who can be called in and help you stand up, because we know it isn’t easy.
And sometimes, there is nothing that can be done. I hate that but it is also true.
Just this week one of my sons was telling me about a situation that was not right involving his significant other and he was so upset and there was nothing he could do to remedy it because power dynamics do exist in this world. So I listened and I heard his frustration and I asked what they were going to do next. They were resigned to do nothing. But he knew from all the conversations we have had, his role is to support her, to follow her lead. Because sometimes support looks like company and care.
I still want to talk about group dynamics and groupthink. I want to talk about power dynamics and when it is okay to speak up, I want to acknowledge that it isn’t always as black and white as these cases make it seem. Sometimes we don’t get it right and have to try to do better the next day. None of these are easy to resolve but we can keep talking about them. Here. With the boys. In your homes.
So I’d encourage you to have the conversations, teach the topics, and then find ways to model how to speak up when things are bad. And talk about the times when you tried and it didn’t work out and you tried again. Say, “Doing the right thing is always the right thing, but learning that takes a lifetime of practice” and I’m here to do it with you.
Keep talking. There is still so much to say.
If you’d rather listen:
