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CODE: ____________________________________
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\centerline{COVER SHEET}
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\centerline{1987-88 Writing Prize Competition}
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Name of Specific Competition: \vtop{\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1}%
\small\normalsize\hbox{\bf The Robert A. Boit Writing Prize}%
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Title of Submission: {\bf The Social Compact}
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Student's Name: {\bf Andrew Marc Greene}
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Student's Spring Term Address: {\bf Random Hall Rm.~232}
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Student's Major and Class: {\bf VIII-A; Freshman (Class of 1991)}
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Student's ID \#: {\bf 085-46-2524}
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Address after May 20, 1988: \vtop{\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1}%
\small\normalsize\hbox{\bf 179-50 80 Road}\hbox{\bf Jamaica Estates, NY 11432}%
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Address after June 7, 1988: {\bf Same as Spring Term Address}
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\centerline{\underline{The Social Compact}}
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When I was much younger, in elementary school, I wasn't well-liked.
The other kids would pick on me, beat me up, call me names.  Typical
behavior, I suppose; and someone had to be the victim.  And that someone
was me.

I dealt with it in the only way I could.  I tried very hard to make
the adults in my world like me.  I listened to classical music and
disdained rock and disco because they were "childish."  I never got
into the habit of using "swear words."  I abandoned my childhood, or
so I thought, and eagerly embraced the adult world.

The adult world pitied me, liked me, and accepted me.  This only
increased my alienation from my peers, but I had long since decided
that I didn't need them.  They weren't society -- and society and I
understood each other.  We had made a Compact.

I wound up at Hunter College High School, a "nerd school" as 
\underline{Doonesbury} once called the genre.  At Hunter I found other people
like me, people who had tried to blend in with the adults.  People
who had also signed the Compact with society.

Some, admittedly, used "foul language," and told dirty jokes and
whatnot.  This bothered me a little, but I put up with it.  After
all, tolerance was part of the Compact.

And then there were others, who openly flouted the Compact and
succeeded anyway.  They would smoke and drink.  The rumours were
that some of them even had sex.  I comforted myself with the knowledge
that their evils would catch up with them, that society would frown
upon their breach of the Compact.

And now I'm a freshman at college.  I got into MIT, so society is
keeping its end of the arrangement.  On the other hand, people who seem to
have no idea what the Compact entails don't seem to be suffering for
it.  Society accepts them, even rewards some of them.  If anyone
seems to be losing because of the Social Compact, it is me for trying
to uphold it.

So now I'm wondering just what the Social Compact really is.  I agree
to abide by certain guidelines, and society agrees to accept me for
what I am.  The guidelines are simple: no drugs, including tobacco and
alcohol.  No foul language.  Sex only within marriage.
General respect for other people.  That sort of thing.

It's the other half that's giving me trouble, I think.  "We, the
world at large, hereby agree to accept J. Random User\footnote{\tt
I would really rather have my real name here; but rules are rules.} for
what he really is, conditional on his continued adherance to section
2.718 above."

First of all, I'm begining to wonder if that clause is really
conditional.  If I deviate from the norm, if I break the rules, I
wonder what will happen to me.  Will I really be cast out?  All
available evidence indicates that I won't.  But my years of careful
conditioning cry out in panic at the thought.  "It's not worth the
risk," I hear myself say.  "It's too dangerous."

The second, and more troubling, question is whether society is 
accepting me for what I really am.  I have my deep, dark secrets.
Sometimes, I think the "bad words" -- sometimes, when no one can hear,
I even say them.  Sometimes I -- dare I admit to this? 
No.  Secrets they are, and secrets they must remain.  For the
fact remains that society is still accepting me.  So I bury the
blemishes.  I strive to appear to be the perfect member of society.  If
the world knew the truth, who can tell what would happen?

Is the "me" that society is accepting the real me?  Or is it --
am I -- just a simulation?  A carefully crafted fa\c{c}ade behind which a
normal, everyday teenager lurks; waiting, watching, plotting to escape?

And as I reflect over these questions, a third one arises.  One that
completely dwarfs the other two.

Who signed the Compact on society's part, anyway?


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