Days after board members laughed at the exchange, the Washington County Board of Education called the comments “shocking,” saying “no explanation can justify that.”
The problem is how the institutions deal with it. If they try to cover it up, the whole institution is complicit.
Take the Boy Scouts for example. It’s an organization dealing almost exclusively with children, so of course pedophiles will be attracted to it.
Does that mean that all about leaders are pedophiles? Of course not. But the fact that the BSA swept it under the rug to save face means you can’t be sure anything will be done if there’s one in your troop.
It’s in the institutions best interest to cover it up. It is not in their interest to be transparent.
Institutions, made of people, are just like people, in that they pursue their self-interest first and foremost. Morality, the law, and all that is ultimately secondary.
And the self-interest primarily for orgs, like most people, is to protect their image at all costs, including the cost of allowing abusers to continue to be into them, as long as it isn’t publicly visible and it’s plausibly deniable.
The problem is how the institutions deal with it. If they try to cover it up, the whole institution is complicit.
Take the Boy Scouts for example. It’s an organization dealing almost exclusively with children, so of course pedophiles will be attracted to it.
Does that mean that all about leaders are pedophiles? Of course not. But the fact that the BSA swept it under the rug to save face means you can’t be sure anything will be done if there’s one in your troop.
Agreed.
It’s in the institutions best interest to cover it up. It is not in their interest to be transparent.
Institutions, made of people, are just like people, in that they pursue their self-interest first and foremost. Morality, the law, and all that is ultimately secondary.
And the self-interest primarily for orgs, like most people, is to protect their image at all costs, including the cost of allowing abusers to continue to be into them, as long as it isn’t publicly visible and it’s plausibly deniable.
But the irony is that rooting out the pedophiles would have done far more to protect their image.