March 9, 2004
-
Image and Reputation
Yesterday I receiving a purchase order from an institution I'd never heard of. I checked it
out on-line, to suss veracity, and was charmed enough to spend more than the requisite professional few moments looking at Rowan University, an eighty-one-year-old institution of higher learning in New Jersey, originally started as a women's teacher-training college, and an early leader in the special education movement. I've never been to Rowan, never (as far as I know) known a graduate, and don't necessarily expect to have any affiliation with it in future. But I liked the website. I smiled at their historical pride and future plans. I ended my brief virtual visit with a good feeling about them.On an entirely unrelated note, I heard a disturbing rumor the other day. A friend with a summer home in the northeast mentioned that a children's camp where I once worked had experienced a scandal involving sex and a minor. That was the extent of the remark: no indication of when, or who, or whether it was a truly gruesome event between a mature adult and a child, or perhaps one of the grey-area matters between, say, a 17-year-old camper and a 20-year-old counselor (still a matter of illegality, but in such instances -- sometimes -- less about the laws of man than the laws of nature). The story might be untrue, or blown out of proportion, or rife with extenuating circumstances. But somehow just the breath of such an evil thing tainted my otherwise pristine memory of a beautiful place with a beautiful tradition; a place where a part of my heart will always lie.
Thinking about these two institutions, one entirely unknown to me and the other once intimately familiar; about my unadulterated pleasure in the one, and my now disturbed concern about the other, left me wondering at the ease of image-making, and the incredible fragility of reputation. The internet and our all-pervasive electronic media are accused of exacerbating this ease and that fragility, but that's not really the case, is it? Today, images and reputation are made or broken by the snide off-remark on the newscast. In Jane Austen's time it was the mere arch of a meaningful eyebrow. When we all lived in caves it was a grunt and a turn of the shoulder. But it's always been with us, that easiness and that fragility.
I'm returning to my purchase orders with a heavier heart, somehow.
Comments (15)
So easy to defame.
So difficult to recover.
My cynicism makes me approach everything apparently good and apparently evil with the same attitude of "I need a helluva lot more information." It's so very difficult for me to judge things because (in my world, at least) very few things are black and white.
And then there was my first summer at band camp....
My parents met at Glassboro (now Rowan University). It's very nice small college in a sleepy little town.
It's amazing to me how fragile are the connections we have with other people. Be it reputation or friendship. We are all one step away from being gone. It's amazing to me that reputations and friendships stay whole.
One phenomenon that feeds this roller coaster of raising persons or other entities to the pinnacles and then casting them down into the pits is our yearning for wonderful things, for heroes. We want so badly to have safe, perfect places in our lives; wise, wonderful people with impeccable integrity that we take the most likely candidates and build them into unsustainable images. With the goal being to find strength and encouragement in a perfect thing, the slightest blemish spoils the entire fruit. Marketers understand our tendency to take a few hints at an image and finish the painting ourselves. This concept is the foundation of the political ad campaigns. Give us the snippets that nudge us in the desired direction and we will create the rest of the person ourselves, either someone that we passionately back as the next leader of the world or someone who is bound to bring about the apocalypse if left to his own designs. (rambling now, time to go)
About that purchase order…was it a biggy?
Soaring eagles don't have to worry about crossing rivers.
I'm especially aware of how an image can be tarnished, working in this field where an accusation is tantamount to a guilty verdict, as far as the public--and image--is concerned. I'd be very disturbed to find that something truly horrible had happened at the camp where I worked, but then, people work there, and people do strange things.
Truth is, since this was a Christian camp, I was more than disturbed at one time to find that there was some humpalot going on between staff. Can you imagine?
well, i am sure alot of other folks who know the place feel the same way. you are not alone in your disappointment.
some people live in houses with paper walls and they learn to give each other respect and privacy. there is no excuse for destroying a reputation just because it is easy.
I'm glad there are sensitive people like you in the world, though at times sensitivity seems to have its burdens, doesn't it?
Agree with lionne above.
I hope something will come along that will lighten your heart again today {{{Faith}}}
Fragility. Yeah, it's around. Former sports heroes -- Pete Rose, Kobe Bryant, O.J. Simpson, etc. My mood swings: what, is it a function of aging? No, I think my moods have always been fragile. Friendships? too many of these are fragile, too. But, thankfully, some friends seem thoroughly solid, dependable. And some memories, too. Cherish the solid ones.
My friend Lisa, who was responsible for first bringing me to Xanga, gradutaed there (but it was then called Glassboro State - it was renamed after a very rich benefactor, but is still the State teacher's college)...
And here in NM, a 17 year old would be legal (with their consent, of course)...
er, I meant graduated... I think gradutating is what they do here at UNM...
you hit the nail on the head as usual ... it has always been with us, and will always be with us.. because human nature has always had a dark side to it.
and i agree it makes me feel uneasy.. too.
yes, your point is true and valid. However, the flip side is that some reputations are mended by the defense of a friend. people are comforted when they are seen in the glimpse of an eye, or when a stranger reaches out to help. there are still those who would defend the vulnerable and ignore the ravages of vain commentators. Blessings
well said epee. A positive spin that. Even in our minds are people or things guilty first and innocence proven later.
Comments are closed.