Bogenhofen: The Drama

   Life wouldn't be complete without a little drama to spice it up, and although I mainly post about all the sweet moments I'm having with my friends and adventures, I'd be lying if I didn't say there was some drama here at Bogi as well. Strap in everyone, this is going to be a long post and there aren't going to be pictures. 

   Now, I'd like to clarify that this drama doesn't directly involve any of my friends or me. It's on a larger scale/institutional level. Interpersonal drama is definitely private and I don't believe in sharing that on a public forum like this. Also, for the sake of anonymity, I won't be using the real names of anyone involved. 

    So it begins. Shortly after arriving at Bogenhofen, we found out that there would be another student arriving, an older gentleman who I will call Tom (because that's generic). I didn't necessarily think anything of this at the time, there's certainly nothing wrong with going back to school or going to school to learn a language when you are older. When he first arrived, I thought he was nice enough. He was about sixty years old and seemed like a seasoned traveler. I soon came to find out that he knew my professor, and had gone on many over-sees tours with him. From the way he made it sound, they were actually quite good friends. (This will be important later). 

   Well, give it a few days, and suddenly I started seeing red flags... everywhere. The first thing that happened was that me and a group of friends were in Braunau. Most of my friends had already eaten, but one friend and I wanted to stay longer and get Indian food. Tom absolutely insisted on eating with us, even though we tried to refuse multiple times. Unsure what else to do, we let him tag along. Dinner was extremely uncomfortable. I remember it had been raining all day, and so I was complaining about how frizzy my hair was and he just kept telling me how gorgeous I looked, which made me really uncomfortable. He asked us a lot of strange, somewhat personal questions, even some about our relationship status, and at the end of our meal, he wouldn't let us pay for our food and even bought us a cab back to school. From that day forward I decided I was going to stay far away from Tom and make it very clear I wanted nothing to do with whatever game he was trying to play. But unfortunately, it's hard to stay away from someone when they're in the same class as you. Thus, that was not the only incident with Tom. 

   I remember during our first trip to Salzburg, Tom was taking pictures of everything. At one point we all got dressed in some historical outfits and he started taking pictures of me while I was putting the dress on over my clothes. The thought of it made me really uncomfortable, so I covered his lens with my hand and politely asked him not to take any more photos of me, but it bothered me knowing that he had the photos. So, a few days later, I walked up to him and told him I wanted him to delete the photos of me. He acted offended that I would suggest it and wanted to know why. He said, "Well if you don't think you look pretty I can assure you you do." I told him it was none of his business why I wanted him to delete them (because I didn't want to put any ideas in his head) and he told me that he had thousands of photos on his phone and it would be too hard to find them again. So I told him that it didn't matter because they were pictures of me and I insisted he go onto his camera and delete them. Thankfully, he did, but I also learned that he had posted all of those pictures online too. Regardless, his attitude towards me was absolutely unacceptable and creepy when I asked him to delete the photos. 

   During our trip to Vienna, a boy came up to me to inform me that he'd learned that Tom had been dating a highschooler in America before he came to Austria and that he had explicitly stated he was actively looking for a wife and that she needed to be young so that she could have children. I have my own opinions about a sixty-year-old man wanting to have kids the natural way, but regardless, you don't need a wife who is a minor or of college age to have children. Yet, it had become very clear that Tom was only targeting women in their twenties and below. 

   Upon hearing this information I immediately went to the director of the language program to voice my concerns, but I was brushed off.

   As the months went by, I learned other girls were having similar experiences and I saw some of these experiences firsthand. Tom was taking photos even when people asked him not to, making comments on women's bodies, and making innuendos and inappropriate comments about the female body. He even took a high schooler into town to buy her a dress for the school banquet, and yes, he took photos of her in the dresses she tried on. By now, I was thoroughly disgusted, but Tom knew I didn't like him, so he stayed far away from me and I stayed away from him and tried to keep other girls away from him too.    

   Things just kept happening but no one would listen to our concerns. Then, at Christmas time, Tom's true colors really came to light. For Christmas, Tom really wanted to take all of the volunteers, language students, and anyone else who was far from home up to a lodge to celebrate Christmas. I did not want to go because one; I did not like, nor trust Tom, and two; I don't believe in mooching off someone when you wouldn't even hold a conversation with them if you don't have to. It just feels unprincipled to me. However, I quickly came to realize if I didn't go, I would be alone on Christmas. So, I finally agreed. 

   Needless to say, it was a disaster and there was so much drama. It became clear that what Tom disguised as generosity was really manipulation. Because he had paid for us all to go to the lodge (We all found out later that none of us wanted to go, we just went because everyone else was going), we were expected to do everything exactly how he wanted it done, and if we didn't, he pouted. Now, I agree that if someone pays for something, they are somewhat justified in wanting things to go a certain way. But this was EXTREME. He wanted to control everything down to the last detail. Like, for example, what room we opened presents in. He even got upset because some of us left the lodge early to catch a train to Budapest and didn't stay to take the tram up the mountain with the rest of the group, which is completely illogical considering we couldn't control when our train departed. 

   One individual had invited his younger sister to come to the lodge with us, and since the rest of us girls had made it clear we wanted nothing to do with him, Tom targeted her. He even told another man, "It's fun to flirt with the new girl. She can run and complain all she wants, girls these days don't know how to have a little fun." 

   Also, for some reason, he pinned me as the enemy the whole week and told everyone it would have been better if my train hadn't made it to Traunkirchen (refer back to my Christmas post for context) because then I wouldn't have been there to disagree with him all the time (a compliment), and he went around telling everyone I was a master manipulator and that I just wanted to capitalize off of every opportunity. I don't really care what he thinks of me, but it's crazy to me that a sixty-year-old man chose to gossip about a nineteen-year-old college student... it's... definitely not mature.

  Okay, so I don't say all that just to "out" Tom, but I want to make it clear how extreme the situation was. I feel like its hard to express over a blog post, and I don't want to sit here and detail every last sentence and gesture he made, so I hope you get the picture. Everyone was uncomfortable, everyone was on edge, no one was happy, yet still, NO ONE in the school would listen to us! 

   Fast forward a month and Tom finds out that there is some stuff going on back in America that he has to handle, and he leaves. Everyone here collectively let their breath go. We were all relieved to know that we didn't have to look over our shoulders to make sure he wasn't taking photos of us anymore, worry about the comments he might make about us, or deflect his audacious advances. 

   Around this time, I was in contact with my professor since we were discussing the upcoming trip to Greece (the same professor who had been on trips with John before). My professor always asks me about how things are going when we talk and this time he specifically said, "Now Afton, I heard that Tom is there and I wanted to ask how things have been going. I've been worried about you and I have my concerns with Tom. I've went on a few trips with him and we had a lot of complaints and he made some people really uncomfortable and also did some inappropriate things (clearly Tom had exagerated about their friendship ;)." When my professor said that, I saw my chance, and I told him everything I just wrote here. He was furious! Not only was he upset by Tom's audacity, but by the fact that administration hadn't done anything. He told me that if I ever needed him to talk to administration he would. As I am sure you can imagine, this was very encouraging. It was nice to have one person listen to me. 

Well, sadly, our peace of mind didn't last long. Through the grapevine, I learned that Tom would actually be returning to Bogenhofen in May. I was flabbergasted. It made no sense. He had missed months worth of class, he couldn't just come back and pick up where he left off. There was no logical reason for him to return. But it was true, for some reason, Tom was returning and even though he would not be a language student anymore, they were allowing him to come on a school funded trip to Berlin with us. 

   Now, it makes no sense to me why the school would allow that if he's not actually attending classes, but it also makes no sense to me why Tom would want to come. If it wasn't clear already, Tom is an extremely wealthy man. If he wanted to go to Berlin, he could go on his own and stay in a luxury hotel if he wanted. So why would he want to tag along with a bunch of college students?

   When I heard this information, I immediately texted my professor. He texted me back saying, "I want to talk to administration on your behalf." It seemed to me that this was the best option. Clearly, administration was not taking students and volunteers seriously. But I thought that if they heard it from a higher authority, someone who was not directly involved, and someone who was sending students to them in good faith, they might actually take it seriously. I want to make it very clear that I wasn't necessarily trying to get Tom kicked off campus or punished, I just wanted someone to be accountable if something did happened. I wanted administration to take things seriously so that they could properly consider the safety of their students. I just didn't want anyone to get hurt. 

   So, I compiled a list of anonymous testimonies against Tom and sent them to my professor, who, along with his own email, sent them to the principal of the school. I'm really grateful to my professor for his help. I would have never dragged him into something like that, or passed the responsibility off to someone else, but it was the fact that he offered that meant so much to me and so many other girls on campus. 

   The response to his email was positive. The president of the school admitted he knew there was some concerns with Tom, but the people who had approached him (the people I had tried talking to) had talked it down. He assured my professor that Tom would get a talking to when he returned and would have three strikes before he was out. 

And then... radio silence. There were conflicting reports. One person came to me and told me Tom wasn't coming back, everyone else told me he was. The situation was not ideal, but I had done what was right, and tried my best, and I was okay with that. No one from administration ever contacted me to hear my concerns, and this made my professor very angry, but there wasn't much more we could do on our end. 

   So, what was the issue? Why were our concerns swept under the rug so briskly? Money. Tom had a lot of money and he was pouring it into the schools coffers. And in the same way that he used money against us at Christmas, it was this that allowed him to get away with so much at school. Every year, highschoolers from Bogi travel to America, and this year Tom was sponsoring part of their trip and even letting the students stay at his bed and breakfast for free. To thank him, they were allowing him to come to Berlin with us.  

   Like most Adventist institutions, Bogenhofen struggles to get by. Here in Europe, the government offers no support to private schools, and so Bogenhofen is on its own. I understand that it is hard for them to make money and support their ministry, but having needs cannot stand above principal. Especially in a Christian institution. Bogenhofen is a ministry, God can find ways to support the ministry that don't put students at risk of sexual harassment. So where is the faith? 

   Tom is still planning to return, but one student has reported that, after she complained to a more sympathetic teacher, he won't be allowed to come to Berlin with us and will not be allowed to take photos. I simply can't believe it until I see it. However, I am grateful I will be leaving soon, so that I won't have to face him everyday. But I worry about new girls who come on to campus and don't know, and I wish I could be here to protect them. I pray that Bogi takes on that responsibility instead. My professor has also said that if Tom asks, he will not be permitted to join our tour to Greece since my professor is bringing all of his female students with him. He has certainly been a champion through this whole ordeal, and it is comforting to know I have people standing behind me even when it feels like my voice isn't carrying far enough.  

I would also like to formally recognize, that within this situation, I have not been entirely faultless either, and I've certainly had unchristian moments. I'm not trying to paint myself as a hero or anything like that. This is just a retelling of what happened from my perspective and with some of my opinions sprinkled in. :)