Tales of DC’s Beach Week and the Debauched Private School Culture That Created Brett Kavanaugh
The most prominent entry in Brett Kavanaugh’s now overly-dissected, perfectly preserved 1982 “calendar-diary” from his senior year at Georgetown Prep is boy-scrawled over June 6th to June 11th: B E A C H W E E K.
The event is marked in all caps and traced over multiple times for emphasis. It’s clear that this is an important week for young Kavanaugh. So important that he immortalized it in his yearbook as well, with the entry “Beach Week Ralph Club” (the entry “Rehoboth Police Fan Club” is Beach Week related, too). Anyone who grew up in the DC area, particularly those who grew up in its white privileged enclaves, knows why Beach Week took on such significance for Kavanaugh: the high school tradition was and continues to be (at least since we last checked) a booze- and drug-fueled free-for-all where prep school almost-grads go to black out for one full week, frequently leaving a path of destruction in their wakes.
That week of Kavanaugh’s life took on even more prominence as he was asked about it during his lengthy testimony and questioning before the Senate judiciary committee on Thursday. (Senator Patrick Leahy asked Kavanaugh, “[Mark Judge] authored a book titled Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk. He references a Bart O'Kavanaugh vomiting in someone's car during beach week then passing out. Is that you that he's talking about?” Kavanaugh told Senator Leahy the book was a “fictionalized account.”)
The annual tradition has been both a touristic boon and scourge to the affected towns-mainly Delaware's Rehobeth, Bethany and Dewey Beaches. In a 2012 conference with parents and seniors at Montgomery County’s Walter Johnson High School, Dewey Beach Police Sgt. Clifford Dempsey said, “The binge drinking is horrible. Marijuana is in every house we go to. The pills? An absolute nightmare.” Rental houses have been destroyed; in 2013, then-Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler was scandalously photographed walking through a party where “three teens are dancing on a table,” and “at least one red plastic cup is in view.” In 2011, Dewey Beach made 120 underage drinking arrests. At least one person has died.
We both grew up in Washington, D.C., went to public and private schools, and attended Beach Week. Seeing “Beach Week” and the culture that surrounded it examined on a national stage triggered memories of a time that was exhilarating but fraught. Of course, everyone’s experience of Beach Week was unique. One of us remembers it as purported fun with an overwhelming undercurrent of anxiety and danger; another as a place for rushed experimentation. But across our stories and the stories we solicited from friends and acquaintances, certain themes emerged. Unhealthy amounts of alcohol. The pressure to rack up adult experiences. Parties full of unknown guys. A sense of vulnerability among women. A sense that there were no consequences.
“They circled like hungry predators.”
Looking back on the concept of Beach Week, I’m dumbfounded that we participated in such an event. It’s a tremendous amount of pressure at that age-girls wanting to look pretty and fit in their bikinis during the day and barely-there shorts at night, guys also needing to feel confident in their skin, either showing off their athletic prowess on the beach or their musicianship at night. And there were those guys who had neither, lurking in the backgrounds, drinking more than they should or knew how to.
At a time where we were all preparing to say goodbye, for good and for bad, I think so many thought of the week as a last chance and desperate attempt to live out those movie-epic moments of high school. If it didn’t happen that week, it would never.
We were lucky to be part of a group of kids that were kind and caring and I did feel safe with them. However, other schools joined in-and those were the moments where things, bad things, could happen. It was never other females who joined in on the houses, it was always males. You could tell from the point of their arrival which girls the “outsiders” had their eyes on. Most likely, there were multiple choices or options, in their eyes, and they took “defeat” pretty well, if you can call it that. They circled, like hungry predators, waiting for their chance to pounce. If one didn’t work, they’d move on to the next. Alcohol flowing, inhibitions down, Why not, right? Sex, making out, hooking up-whatever today’s terms are, surrounded the week.
I had a few unfortunate encounters, most of which I was equally responsible for, but one of which still irks me to this day. A few of my friends and I decided to call it an early night and go back to the house and get some rest. I was in the bathroom, washing my face and brushing my teeth, when a guy, friend of a friend, I barely knew, walked in on me. He blocked the bathroom door and told me the only way out was with a kiss. I remember cocking my head and asking, through my toothpaste foam, how he could be serious but he refused to leave. I tried negotiating and pushing past him but he was just too tall and tall strong. I finally decided to give him a kiss after no avail. When he leaned in, I ducked under and pushed through the door. I ran out to a male friend who stayed with me the rest of the night. I’ve seen him around a few times since then but we never talked about “that” again. I’m fairly certain he has zero recollection of it and I wasn’t the only girl he went after that week.
-Emily Grinstead, Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, 2000
“They thought they were above the law.”
It was a period of total lawlessness. There were no rules. I went to Beach Week two years in a row. I have gross memories. The first year I went I found a woman in a bed, incomprehensibly drunk and naked with a guy she didn’t know. I think I walked into a house through the wrong door and found her. And she was slurring her words and nude. It was frightening.
The culture at beach week, there’s an element of, when you get blackout drunk, crazy stuff will happen. I remember stories of men getting so drunk that they peed all of the walls of their beach rental. They got arrested and they thought it was so funny. They thought they were above the law. There was a messed up class dynamic about it all. Most of the beach week goers are private school kids that come from prominent families that go to these down and out beach towns and slum it for a week. This included, for the rich white kids, pushing police limits as if sport. It was a privileged abuse of power. -Marissa Nathan Gerson, Sidwell Friends, 2000
“If you didn’t have a debauched evening, then you’d missed the point.”
The last month of high school for us was just party after party after party. Every thing from country club parties to pool parties to house party blowouts (one where I remember the parents doing keg stands) and Beach Week was the culmination.
Parents and the administration just let it happen. They just turned away and were like, have fun. It gave it this air of permission. Like it was our right. As if, after four years in these prestigious private schools, where we’d worked so hard to get into an Ivy League school, we deserved this. Now we got to burn it off.
At beach week I remember people ending up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. One girl got hit by a Mack truck and ended up in the hospital, she was fine. I didn’t drink at all in high school so I was able to watch everything play out. It really seemed like if you didn’t have a debauched evening then you’d missed the point.
People had the financial backing of their families to fall back on [if anything went wrong]. The worst thing that would happen is your parent would pay a fine. Or hire a lawyer. The repercussions were monetary. And everyone knew the community could afford it. That allowed the recklessness to happen.
I remember the Landon guys used to drunk drive as a sport. They thought it was funny. My memory of the Landon parking lot was these hulking cars, new Jeep Cherokees, with lacrosse sticks spilling out of them almost like spears, with rap music blasting. It was ridiculous but also really intimidating.
-Alison Baenen, Holton Arms, 2000
“Got hauled off in a paddywagon.”
Lots of booze, lots of weed, lots of 18-year-olds getting involved in general shenanigans. Biggest things that stand out in my mind was the fact that our final party of the week got busted by the cops and 30+ of my compatriots got hauled off in a paddywagon to the local drunk tank-it was sort of a big deal, ended up on the DC news. For most of us, it was a chance to get a taste of what college might be like. I’d say it was pretty true to life.
-Ben, Sidwell Friends, 2007
“Nobody is looking out for your safety.”
Beach week was the most debaucherous week of high school, by far. There was absolutely no parent supervision. The purpose of the week was to be as drunk as possible for seven days straight. I truly don't remember a lot of it because of this. But I do remember a lot of stuff getting broken, and people getting hurt. I remember the distinct fear that comes with being a young person and knowing that nobody is in control of what's going on around you, and nobody is looking out for your safety and well-being. I remember a friend getting belligerently drunk and running down the street while we all tried to stop him, eventually falling and really hurting himself, getting the cops called on him, and him getting arrested. I remember people laughing while it happened. I remember sex and hooking up being a huge part of the purpose of beach week-each day spent reflecting on who hooked up with whom the night before.
Although I didn't have any personal sexual experiences that were non-consensual, given the amount of alcohol and promiscuity associated with the week I'd be shocked if they didn't happen. As an adult, I've thought a lot about the privilege that allowed us to participate in Beach Week. We were a bunch of rich kids that went to private school who had powerful parents and we felt that we could do anything we wanted and get away with it. We felt that we were entitled to everything-to trashing the houses we were staying in, to screaming at the top of our lungs in the middle of the night on residential streets, to drinking and doing drugs and having sex without concern for what the consequences of our actions might be (arrests, alcohol poisoning, broken property and who knows what else). Beach week was about trying to get away with as much as possible in the name of "fun."
- Rachel, Georgetown Day School, 2008
“Maret created a safe space to fuck up.”
We embraced and chased the debauchery. We hired a stripper. We called ourselves the NSA-the National Sluts Association. It’s so horrible.
We were active participants in seeking heavy drinking and hookups, but in NO WAY did that mean we wanted something non-consensual. But that glorification of debauchery and partying is what can lead to a culture where consent isn’t even part of the conversation. And I look back on that with shame. We thought it was our chance to be wild and we were. But it’s because it felt like there were no consequences. And there really weren’t. Maret created a safe space to fuck up.
-Julia, Maret School
“It was in the air we breathed.”
I think the complexity is that beach week was FUN-it was a week-long sleepover with my best friends, situated on a mile-long boardwalk, chaperoned by some very lax parents who happened to be my own. The destructive aspects of the week-getting recklessly drunk, taunting cops, and waking up to vaguely remembered hookups-weren’t something I’d learned to identify yet as part of a malignant and entitled culture. It was in the air we breathed.
-Riley, Georgetown Day School, 2008
“Every guy was VERY into us girls doing shots.”
The months leading up to beach week was a very intense period of self-scrutiny and obsession about my body. I exercised ferociously, starved myself, sometimes threw up after meals, and made sure my bikinis matched those of my fellow skinny, beautiful friends. Looking back in my mid-30s now, I realize that massive self-esteem issues and body image insecurities was not a healthy baseline for spending a week with hundreds of other insecure teenagers looking to hook up, get fucked up, and prove our independence away from our parents for the first time.
The guys from other schools would lurk around our house, and even came over, uninvited, to scope out the hottest/easiest girls they could hook up with. The danger arose quickly, as some of the guys from a neighboring house came into our house while we weren't there and stole from us.
My girlfriends and I were invited by some private school guys to go to one of their parties in one of the neighboring beach towns. Barely dressed in skimpy skirts and tank tops, we walked at least 20 mins on a desolate, dark, mostly unmarked street to get to this private school party. No cell phones or GPS to help guide the way, just a few shots of liquid courage. At the party, a crowd of guys were doing beer bongs and shots were passed all around-of course to us girls first. I don't remember much else about that party, except that every guy was VERY into us girls drinking and doing shots.
-Catherine, Woodrow Wilson Senior High School
“You’re just a drama girl.”
Beach week was a lawless land. I got tan and thought it looked good and normal. I drank to excess. A boy named Garrett told me with kind and bloodshot eyes that he “always thought [I was] cute, but couldn’t say it because the guys think you’re just a Drama girl.” I did not have sex with Garrett but I did have sex with another guy and his roommate for the trip walked in on us and I assume they both were of the “she’s just a Drama girl” crew because neither spoke to me again.
-Natalie, St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes, 2009
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