At one point she endured four months in the no-guy zone. A counselor caught her and imposed an "all-boy ban" -she was barred even from speaking to guys. A fellow student called her homeless.įeeling dejected, Skylar sneaked off with a boy and broke the "sex agreement" (though they didn't have sex). On her fourth day a counselor told her she looked, well, grungy. She arrived on campus in April of last year and instantly resorted to her own form of protest: She refused to shower. Skylar is a cute, green-eyed 16-year-old girl still favoring the grunge look long after it went out of style. Some sneak painkillers from a fellow student with, say, a broken arm. Last year one boy jumped off a balcony and cut his head upon landing after a few stitches he was fine. A dozen kids try to escape each year, but they rarely make it as far as the nearby town. Instead of watching television they spend time in group "raps" (hippie slang still in use, somehow, 35 years later).Īt first, they rebel in whatever ways they can. They must get hourly signatures proving their whereabouts. I don't need to scare people to make friends."Īfter running amok at home, kids can be shocked by CEDU's strict structure. Now, she says, "I know I can be a normal teenager and be cool. "It's cool that we're a family again." In August Ashley graduated from CEDU she is in ninth grade. "They're learning just like I am," she says. Her face lights up when she tells of how her folks attended a parenting workshop. Ashley has even adopted the CEDU protocol of greeting counselors with hugs - without rolling her eyes. Now she says "cussing is trashy." Instead of shouting, she calmly expresses herself in group therapy. Two months of working weekends wore her down. For each offense she had to rake leaves or shovel snow on Sundays. ![]() When Ashley first arrived she spewed curses at teachers. Break a rule and they must chop wood or dig a stump. Students make "agreements" to avoid drugs, profanity and sex (even mere kissing). The idea: without the shield, kids find healthier ways to communicate.Ĭounselors use rules to break down defiant kids. Her gothic scowl has yielded to a soft smile, and her black duds have been replaced by CEDU's uniform of khakis and a collared shirt. In her dorm she keeps seven cute Care Bears. Counselors unplugged her piercings, and her dyed hair has grown out to its natural brown she wears it in a ponytail. Today it is hard to picture the old Ashley. From there, she went to a wilderness program, then to CEDU. Mom called the cops, who handcuffed the 12-year-old and took her to an adult psych ward where she was held for more than a week. One night, she screamed that she wanted to kill herself. She cut class and fought with her parents. The doctor prescribed Prozac, but she wouldn't take it - she'd been on too many drugs when she was sick (nor did she use illicit drugs, she says). Ashley's mother sent her to a new school and a shrink. She reached out the only way she knew how: by looking as alienated as she felt. When Ashley went back to school, she had an I.V. Her mother cared for her at home, but her father, founder of a Silicon Valley high-tech firm, worked long hours. In seventh grade she was bedridden for months with Lyme disease, taking a deluge of required drugs and swallowing barbiturates to get to sleep. "My clothes reflected how I felt on the inside. Behind the barbed wire Ashley felt frightened and alone. She wore a spiked dog collar and pierced her ears, nose, chin, navel. She dyed her hair jet-black with streaks of red. At age 12 she went "gothic." Tall and thin, she shrouded herself in black clothing, fishnet stockings and a black trench coat. People would cross the street to avoid me," Ashley, 14, says with a glint of pride. On a recent visit, a dozen kids gather at a piano to sing John Lennon's "Imagine." The fresh-faced teens look like they jumped out of a J. Counselors impart lessons from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet. ![]() The name is derived from "See-Do" - that kids first see, then do, the right thing. Acquired for $72 million in 1998, CEDU was founded as a nonprofit school for runaways in 1968. Inside, cushy couches and stone fireplaces warm up classrooms. The 80-acre campus is flanked by national forest and covered in 100-foot-tall sugar pines.īuildings are a hodgepodge: The main house looks like a ski lodge, the art building is a barn. To protect their identities, their real names have been withheld they picked their fictitious names themselves.Ī white-knuckle drive up a mountainside leads to another Brown complex, CEDU Mountain Schools in Running Springs, Calif. 10, 2002 - Forbes spent months interviewing kids, counselors, parents, psychiatrists and medical researchers.
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