Kavanaugh’s 1983 Letter Offers Inside Look at High School Clique
The beachfront property was rented, the guests were invited and an ever-organized Brett M. Kavanaugh had some advice for the seven Georgetown Preparatory School classmates who would be joining him for the weeklong escapade.
In a 1983 letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, the young Judge Kavanaugh warned his friends of the danger of eviction from an Ocean City, Md., condo. In a neatly written postscript, he added: Whoever arrived first at the condo should “warn the neighbors that we’re loud, obnoxious drunks with prolific pukers among us. Advise them to go about 30 miles…”
.. The judge has said that he attended high school parties. “Sometimes I had too many beers,” he testified, adding that he has “cringed” at some of his behavior back then. But his public statements don’t fully capture the binge-drinking culture in which classmates say he was a core participant.
Parties, in the backyards of classmates’ suburban homes when their parents were away, would often attract hundreds of students from nearby private schools, his classmates recall. Five or 10 kegs would be procured and, if all went as planned, drained by the end of the night.
One night during his senior year, according to classmates who witnessed it, Judge Kavanaugh triumphantly hoisted an empty beer keg above his head, in recognition that he and his friends were well on their way to reaching their goal of polishing off 100 kegs during the academic year — an achievement they later boasted about in their yearbook.
Four Georgetown Prep classmates said they saw Judge Kavanaugh and his friends partake in binge-drinking rituals many weekends in which other partygoers saw them inebriated, even having difficulty standing. Three of those classmates signed a July letter, along with more than 150 other alumni, that endorsed him for the Supreme Court.
.. Judge Kavanaugh — nicknamed “Bart” after a Georgetown Prep teacher garbled “Brett” — sometimes acted as a restraining influence. One night, a friend named Sean Feeley was out of control. Judge Kavanaugh pulled him aside and whispered three words: “Come on, Sean.” Mr. Feeley today credits Judge Kavanaugh with knowing how to calm classmates without them losing face.
.. Mr. Judge was widely perceived as a goofball with a big mouth. “He was a clown,” said Richard Holtz, a classmate and friend of Mr. Judge’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s. Once, before a home football game, Mr. Judge and some classmates chugged beers and then dressed up in blue-and-white cheerleader skirts and pranced around the field, a moment that was captured in the school’s yearbook.