My Junior year, I spent an hour after school picking up trash in the nearby Civil War cemetery on a brisk fall day. My crime? Having “too much fun” in class.
I would describe my repentance as more of a fun walk rather than a punishment. The worst part of the entire ordeal was that my fingers got a bit cold. I even had company for some pleasant conversation. Despite my delightful time with JUG, I am a proud one-time offender. My conscience pulled me back from the dark side.
However, forty years ago, JUG was much less of a walk in the park. According to the Dean of Students, Mr. Hendricks ’83, the chores performed were less enjoyable, and the act was more public. Hendricks said, “Students were cleaning toilets and urinals” and the JUG list was “read over the morning announcements and then posted on a wall so everybody could see which of their classmates had JUG”.
JUG even imposed on Prep students’ sacred Saturdays. Hendricks said, “Students who may have missed a JUG or if you did something beyond a regular JUG, you would pay $5 dollars, and work for three hours.”
Although JUG’s harshness has decreased over the past five decades, I would argue that it is for the better. As my friend Fyodor Dostoyevsky, author of my favorite novel, Crime and Punishment, wrote, “The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment.”
My guilt for potentially disrupting the learning of my classmates was incentive enough for me to never allow myself to have fun in class again. I did not even need my nature walk to tell me so. And I am not alone in this. Unnamed student criminal #1 said, “I got JUG for using my phone in class. I have not used my phone within 50 fifty feet of campus since.”
Inspiring stories like these are why the modernization of JUG at Seattle Prep has been a good thing. The guilt associated with the crime of poor parking and other heinous activities has prevented hundreds of students from committing a second offense.
In a world where the news headlines do not have much hope, here is some: JUG no longer needed at Prep, students’ conscience is now enough.
