There was an article in our paper. An article that I, quite frankly, am disgusted with.

For some backstory: the phrase “boys will be boys” has a history with our grade. Last year, on the way back from our sophomore retreat, we all got exposed for a lot of inexcusably misogynistic and generally terrible memes and messages, worse than anything in that newspaper. We stepped off the buses in high spirits, thinking they couldn’t send us all to the office, and sat down as a group on the pavement, and someone yelled “boys will be boys.” We got yelled at for that. All in all, though, I naively wrote it off as boys being boys. It was bad, but it was boys. I thought we had learned.

Boys will do stupid things like get in trouble for hayriding in the parking lot. Boys will do stupid things like racing each other down Preston road. And boys will do stupid things like call their math teacher a fat red tomato. Boys will arm wrestle; they will pull each other’s windshield wipers up; they will tackle each other in the quad. This, to me, should be the full definition of the phrase “boys will be boys.”. And so I do believe that boys will be boys. But the phrase does not apply when you bring women into the equation. I’m done with “boys being boys.” That phrase, as an excuse, has been repeated too many times and excused too many injustices. The wimpy excuses for manhood in that article are disgusting, and I’d like everyone to hear that although some of us boys might be inherently aggressive and impulsive, none of us are untamable. We are not stallions. The good ones, at least, have control over that aggressiveness, and women should rarely see that release of aggression. I would not hide that aggression from a woman, but I would never direct it at her or generally express it near her. If a boy doesn’t have control of himself, especially around women, that is a problem with him and no one else and he deserves full accountability for any and all transgressions, whether he touches the woman or not. I, and my closest friends, some of whom agree with the sentiments in the article, would never treat a woman so poorly.

Lastly, just for a loud and clear address, I do not fear being in a relationship. I don’t think that the #metoo movement has in anyway oppressed my masculinity. In a way, it has shaped it, but in no way has oppressed it. I am just as man as I was before, and maybe more now that I’m aware of just how much of an epidemic rape culture is. Let it be heard that if a man feels like he can’t be around women because “something has changed,” then he shouldn’t have been around women in the first place.

On that note, please remember as you respond. Remember that the author does not represent our whole school. Remember that the author is a human, and remember that we, as his brothers, will come to his personal defense any day, no matter how strongly we disagree with him. Please keep your responses aimed at his policy and not at his person. Some of the transgressions to that so far have been wrong and are something that I thought we the dissenters could restrain ourselves from. That’s not for everyone who’s responded, but for a select few. To whomever changed the St. Mark’s motto on Wikipedia, that unnecessary and offended me a little bit, and to anyone reading this whose opinion on the St. Mark’s student body as a whole has changed, do not allow the article to influence your opinion of St. Mark’s as a whole. Many of us (I speak for the boys and the faculty) have strongly contrasting opinions and are offended by generalizations.

I can not apologize for the article because it is not my place to do that. I will reinforce the idea that while I do not stand behind that opinion, I will stand behind that author. He is my brother, and I will defend him personally to the ends of the earth. But I appreciate y’all laying into his opinion, because I think it’s about fucking time we at St. Mark’s heard both sides of the issue.

Peace out and go Lions, Anonymous