Freedom helps weed out spoiled brats

Paul Carpenter

July 2, 2008

It takes no more than a few desperate moments of craziness to demolish a family's lifetime of decency and productiveness.

According to Sunday's story about ''the future he threw away,'' Greg Hogan Jr. had a life full of promise.

A gifted cello player and the son of a pastor in Ohio, he was president of his class at Lehigh University, studying finance and planning a Wall Street career.

Then, in December 2005, Hogan used a demand note to rob $2,781 from a Wachovia Bank branch in Allentown with no gun or mask, so he was easy to catch.

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Sunday's story told of his release after 22 months in state prisons. It was the latest in dozens of accounts detailing his sob story.

It seems Hogan was the helpless victim of two things -- sudden freedom when he went to college and a gambling ''addiction.''

I am skeptical of almost all addiction claims, but for now, let's focus on the sudden freedom syndrome.

The story said Hogan ''quickly became hooked on Internet poker'' and rolled up big gambling debts after he went from his family's cocoon near Cleveland to wild and woolly Lehigh U.

His father, the Rev. Greg Hogan Sr., blamed it all on Lehigh for letting his son run amok. ''I don't believe colleges are merely being paid to educate. I believe it is also their duty to to take care of these kids,'' he said.

Apart from my emphatic view that education is a college's only duty, what's all this stuff about kids ?

This guy was 19 when he robbed the bank, above the age at which we say people are full-blown adults when it comes to sexual consent or when it's time to vote.

At 17, we say people are old enough to fight and die for their country. The Marquis de Lafayette (speaking of local colleges) joined the French army at 14 and became one of the top generals in the American Revolution when he was 19.

Are today's young people genetically different? Or are they just emasculated and spoiled rotten by coddling?

Have you ever heard somebody over the age of 18 say he or she was too young to vote wisely, or too young for any sort of rights and privileges? Fat chance.

Too many want it both ways. They want the rights and privileges because they're all grown up, and they want to be excused from duties and responsibilities because they aren't.

Sunday's story said Hogan was ''a kid consumed by addiction'' and his case ''fueled a national debate Â about whether colleges should be doing more to supervise students on campus.'' (Should colleges supervise the way they vote?)

The story said Hogan's father ''begged university officials to stop his son from gambling on library computers.'' The father was quoted as saying this:

''When we send our kids off to college, they are going from having their mother breathing down their necks to having absolute freedom overnight.''

Therefore, a college has a ''duty'' to pamper adults.

The story's most succinct passage involved the Rev. Bernard O'Connor, president of another Lehigh Valley institution, DeSales University. He said DeSales advises students on how to avoid gambling problems (with a casino planned nearby), but will not hobble every student's computer just to prevent a few from running amok with sudden freedom and Internet poker.

''We're educating people for life,'' he was quoted as saying, ''not blocking them from the dangers and then sending them off later and saying 'good luck.'''

All this made me think of my nephew, Andy Casolini, who also attended Lehigh University and now is an engineer. I asked him if he was coddled at Lehigh.

''I would not say I was coddled,'' he laughed.

In that case, how did he cope with all that sudden freedom? ''I had to learn self-restraint in certain areas,'' Casolini said.

The military and college are similar when it comes to sudden freedom. When I went in the military (at 17), nobody was coddled. Off-duty freedom was nature's way of separating the weak from those able to deal with things. It sounds callous, but it's good that some go down the drain. It keeps the world from being overrun by spoiled brats, at any age.

I think Lafayette would understand.

paul.carpenter@mcall.com 610-820-6176

Paul Carpenter's commentary appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.