Thinking about what Wille said in this scene of S3E6.
“It’s embedded in the walls here.”
Because he’s absolutely right.
As we know, Hillerska had been getting complaints for the past 10 years. And several alumni have also shared their own horrific stories about the hazing and initiation ceremonies after Wille’s jubilee speech. Hillerska has been in hot water for a very long time, and now, there’s no hiding it anymore.
Wille isn’t to blame for the school’s closure. Neither is Felice. And neither are the other students interviewed by the School Inspectorate.
They were just the canaries in the coal mine— the ones who drew attention to the problems that are practically embedded in the school’s walls
The pain and trauma from the school’s hazing culture, the lingering humiliation of the initiation ceremonies, the cliques, the lies, the secrets, the peer pressure, the family pressure, the elitism, the discrimination against students who are different— it has been there for a very long time. I mean, Felice’s dad said that he was the only Black student at Hillerska during his time at the school, and he was called the N-word by both classmates and teachers.
All of these issues are so deeply ingrained in the school environment that the current students didn’t even see anything wrong with pressuring someone to strip and show his genitals during their sit-in protest— as if they’d forgotten that they were trying to keep the school open by proving that nothing like that was happening.
They may have seen these things as fun traditions, but these traditions do not point to a healthy or safe school environment.
Hillerska was already rotting from within— and it’s been rotting for a very long time. It was only a matter of time before enough people began noticing it and speaking out about it
Wille was the harbinger. The alumni’s stories were wake-up calls that were delaying the inevitable. And though we may not know what some of the other students said in their interviews with the inspectors, I do think that some of them aired out a lot of complaints— enough to raise serious questions about Hillerska’s future.
And Felice’s testimony was definitely the final nail in the coffin
Hillerska was a broken school right from the beginning, long before Wille even transferred. He just gave people the courage to finally speak out.
