Shattered Glass and the SJS Honor Code by Z. Bart Thornton
On Tuesday, September 6th, St. John's students and faculty gathered in the VST
for a showing of the Shattered Glass.
The 2003 film, directed by Billy Ray, chronicles the rise and fall of Stephen
Glass, a clever young journalist who published a series of fabricated stories
in
The New Republic in the late 1990s. As an associate editor for the
magazine — whose political pedigree is aptly captured
in its nickname, "the in-flight magazine of Air Force One"--Glass was
in a unique position to observe the events of a tumultuous and dramatic period
in the nation's capital. Instead, hoping to increase his readership and sales,
Glass began to "shape" his material
in certain unethical ways: he made up quotes, characters, and whole stories.
Ultimately, Glass's world "shattered," to use the film's
metaphor, when the writers at Forbes Digital Magazine stumbled onto
a story Glass had written about a teenage hacker who ostensibly sabotaged a
California corporation. The hacker and corporation were pure fiction. As the
truth is revealed, Glass desperately clings to the shards of the career he has
simultaneously created and subverted.
In a year in which the SJS community is discussing ways to safeguard the viability of the School's long-standing Honor Code, the film provided a
valuable opportunity for students and teachers to examine issues of academic and personal integrity. The idea emerged from a visit Dean of
Students Ted Curry and last year's Senior Prefect Caroline Hussey took to The Episcopal School of Dallas in the fall of 2004. At an Honor Code
symposium, some folks from ESD showed a series of film clips relating to ethical behavior. Subsequently, Ted, Caroline, and I brainstormed films
that would speak to our particular student body. Pretty quickly, we reached a consensus: Shattered Glass fit our needs perfectly. As played by Hayden Christensen, Stephen Glass is--as an Amazon critic puts it--a "stressed-out, overworked kid trying to keep his head above water in the cutthroat world of professional journalism." At 24, he still feels the pressures of a lifetime spent in the leafy confines of his suburban upbringing; he longs to please those around him (his mantra is "Are you mad at me") and he is crushed by his perception that he is letting down those who trust him. In short, for much of the film anyway, he's a "likable liar," one whose motivations we are able to understand if not endorse. By the film's final act, Glass has clearly gone too far. In discussions in English classes after the showing, students perceptively analyzed the trajectory of Glass's fall. They saw the flaws in the journalistic system that produced Glass, but they also spoke eloquently about his culpability. "The worst thing he did," one student said, "was let down his friends."
Our students are an exceptionally honorable bunch. On that I think my colleagues would agree. Nevertheless, we periodically need to find vivid
reminders of what happens when shortcuts are taken and trust is eroded. Shattered Glass presented just such an occasion.
Z. Bart Thornton holds a PH.D. in English from the University of Texas and currently chairs the English department at St. John's School in Houston.
