I don't believe the Kavanaugh denial. I'd like to explain why. Well, beyond the partisan aspects.
Brett Kavanaugh and I are roughly contemporaries. I didn't go to Georgetown Prep. I was one of the token non-Catholics at a similar school in the Baltimore suburbs, class of '85. I think there's a reasonably good chance that the cultures weren't dissimilar.
School was incredibly cliquish. I was never one of the cool kids, but not enough of an outsider that I wasn't aware of who they were. I know which of my classmates were partiers - or at least boasted about being.
I probably had a similar calendar to the ones which became part of the record here. It hasn't been well-preserved over the last few decades, but I know the sorts of things which would have been on mine - appointments, games, tests, special events. I doubt mine would have had a record of people with whom I did those things, but there weren't very many, and I could make reasonable guesses who they were.
Things which didn't happen may or may not have gotten crossed off. Most probably wouldn't have. I certainly wouldn't think that one of those months was evidentiary proof of what I did or didn't do. I don't know if the people who were self-purported partiers would have been similarly scrupulous or not.
"I went to an all-boys Catholic high school," explained Kavanaugh, now a federal appeals court judge. "I was focused on academics and athletics, going to church every Sunday at Little Flower, working on my service projects, and friendship – friendship with my fellow classmates, and friendship with the girls from the local all-girls Catholic schools." (from MSNBC.com citing Kavanaugh's Fox News interview)
I imagine many of my classmates would have said similar things publicly. I remember our senior Social Service projects, and how much of a joke most of the student body though they were. I wouldn't ascribe motive to anyone else, but don't think I'd be significantly misrepresenting to say that very few of us took them seriously enough to have gotten the Ignatian ideal of learning to be "men for others" out of them, but most could grasp the concewpt of the bigger picture well enough to have been able to pencil-whip the required essays and time committments.
A couple of my classmates strike me as fitting the Kavanaugh archetype. I know the exploits of which they bragged. I don't have more than a single point of reference for the sort of parties they claimed to have. It was post-graduation Beach Week. I'd been allowed to go after some significant negotiation because it was fairly clear that the people with whom I was closest weren't the sorts of kids who were likely to be problematic.
That week I spent at the beach with four of my friends. We weren't partiers. We did get invited to one, though, and walked down to it. We stayed for about a half-hour. I can't recall ever seeing such widespread intoxication. I don't know that any sexual misconduct took place, but if even a fraction of the boasting had any basis in reality, it'd have been plausible that someone would have been putting the moves on someone else, consensual or not.
Kavanaugh matches the type of some of my classmates. He actually reminds me significantly of one of them - captain of the football and lacrosse teams, braggart and bully. I remember that guy clearly. The incident which stands out was him trying to elicit a response from a few of his favourite targets...by exposing himself. One or two of his teammates eventually told him to knock it off, but everyone else was pretty much too shocked to respond.
I'm unshocked that at least one of the accusers has reported that the nominee exposed himself to her. I find it highly credible just based on the type.
I know that gender-exclusive schools run deeply in tradition. I think they may be a tradition which has outlived it's usefulness, at least if mine was representative of the sort. In recollection, it's clear that it was a toxic environment driven by testosterone-fueled young men who needed to grow up, and perhaps after so many years, some of us have done so.
