Friends and Enemies in Elan

A large part of Elan was the idea of taking 60 teenagers and trapping them together in a tiny house that they couldn't leave. That alone could have made an interesting social experiment or "reality show".

Most of us had never been away from home for more than a week and suddenly we were stuck together. Add an insane North Korea style brainwashing regiment, and you really have something weird and scary.

The adult staff members merely visited our Elan teenage world. We were the ones who lived and breathed within it 24 hours a day. We were the ones who were at its mercy. What made this very scary as well was the idea that Elan didn't simply take 60 kids and dump them together at the same time. It was a staggered timeline of children. So when you entered as a new resident, various "senior" children were already in charge and had crafted an environment unique to them. And to make it even crazier, age had no basis in "seniority".

So you could have a world run by the top ten residents and two were 15, three were 16, three were 18, one was 17 and one was 19. And like any organization with multiple managers, each one ran the show in their own way and that way may have conflicted with the orders of another one. So you were constantly getting conflicting orders or directions and you were screwed because one would hate you no matter what you did.

So you needed to constantly make decisions that would result in allies or enemies. And since we were all teenagers, there was quite a bit of hazing and peer-pressure. As well as "groupings" of age, or desired music, or attractiveness, or whatever. These are things that the Elan system did its best to control, but like that guy in Jurassic Park says "life, uh, find's a way".

Elan was full of crazy variables as well. For example, in an effort to combat friendships, groupings and the like, every single week we needed to move into a new dorm arrangement. So every single week, new dorm charts would be posted and the inmates would grab their shitty mattress, single box of belongings, and single drawer of clothes, and then shuffle off into a new dorm, or bed.

So over time, you lived with everyone. You heard snoring, and masturbation, and sleep-talking. You had smelly, disgusting, roommates and freak-out roommates, and dangerous roommates.

I guess my point is, we never were away from each other. All day in the program. All night in the dorms. We showered, shaved, shit, everything together and the program was so tightly scheduled that you completely relied on those around you. For example, if even one person in your dorm fucked up and didn't make their bed perfectly (staff would randomly pick dorms every day and bounce quarters off beds, or use their finger to find dust in the corners of the rooms or closets), then guess what, the entire dorm missed breakfast.

Okay, I could write a lot more. But I need to take a break for a minute. Just wanted to give some insight into how connected our lives were and how the program promoted hatred towards one another while discouraging friendships.