由于康奈尔大学兄弟会成员们的沉默让他感到愤怒，他要求自己在多伦多学校里的这些年轻人，在困难时刻要勇敢行动。
Angered by the silence of fraternity brothers at Cornell, he asks the young men at his Toronto school to act bravely in difficult moments.
然而，当消息传出，一名康奈尔大学前学生指控七名兄弟会成员在她失去行动能力的情况下对她实施了性侵犯时，比蒂告诉他的同事们，本周他需要召开一场不同寻常的集会。
But as news broke that a former Cornell University student had accused seven fraternity members of sexually assaulting her while she was incapacitated, Beatty told his faculty he needed to hold a different kind of assembly this week.
或许，当比蒂为他们开门时，这些男孩已经察觉到了这场集会的不同之处。他们把手机都收在口袋里，在这座拥有136年历史的圣公会教堂里找到了座位，甚至没有发出一丝嘲笑。
Maybe the boys could tell, as Beatty held the door open, that this assembly would be different. They kept their phones in their pockets. They found seats in the 136-year-old Anglican chapel without so much as a snicker.
比蒂认识他们中的大多数人，从他们还小得会为失去宠物和祖父母去世而哭泣的时候起。他们获得柔道黄带时，他曾为他们庆祝；他们8岁时，他每个周五都会在办公室里给他们读书。但如今，他们已是青少年，而帮助他们步入成年，正是他的职责。
Beatty had known most of them since they were young enough to cry over lost pets and dying grandparents. He’d celebrated when they earned their yellow belts in judo. He’d read to them every Friday in his office when they were 8. But they were teenagers now, and it was his job to help usher them into adulthood.
“各位先生，”他说，“今天我想和你们谈谈一件困难的事。”比蒂深知他的学生们多么渴望融入集体。他们都穿着同样的蓝色西装外套，正面绣着学校的校徽；领带松松地系在脖子上；大多数人留着同样毛茸茸的发型，让比蒂想起羊驼。他认为他们都是好孩子，无法想象他们中的任何一人会做出可能导致被捕的性侵犯行为。但他想——他必须——对他们提出更高的要求。
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I want to talk with you today about something difficult.”Beatty knew how badly his students wanted to blend in. They all wore the same blue blazers with the school’s crest embroidered on the front. They kept their ties loose at the neck. Most had the same fuzzy haircut that reminded Beatty of an alpaca. They were good boys, he thought. He couldn’t imagine any of them committing the kinds of sexual acts that might get them arrested. But he wanted — he needed — to ask more from them.
站在讲台上时，比蒂想起自己曾在网上看到的一条评论。人们把被指控的兄弟会成员称为“康奈尔七人”。一位女性在Instagram上指出，据称还有另外50名年轻男子曾加入一个Snapchat群组，而一名男子正是在该群中邀请他们参与袭击。她称他们为“康奈尔57人”。
As he stood at the pulpit, Beatty thought of a comment he’d seen online. People had been calling the accused fraternity brothers “the Cornell 7.”One woman noted on Instagram that allegedly 50 other young men had been in a Snapchat group where a man invited them to participate in the assault. She called them “the Cornell 57.”
“没有一个人有勇气阻止这一切，”比蒂说，“他们选择了沉默。”
“Not one had the courage to stop this,” Beatty said. “They stayed silent.”
比蒂扫视着人群。这些男孩们目光紧锁在他身上。他们没有焦躁不安，而是在认真倾听。比蒂告诉他的学生们，他想谈谈这种沉默。“学校是学习的地方。而你们正在学习的最重要的一课，或许就是认识自己，”他说，接着问道：“你想成为怎样的人？”比蒂此前已经两次发表过类似版本的演讲。
Beatty scanned the crowd. The boys had their eyes locked on him. They didn’t fidget. They were listening. Beatty told his boys he wanted to talk about that silence. “School is about learning. And perhaps the most important thing you are learning is about yourself,” he said, then asked: “What kind of man do you want to be?”BEATTY HAD GIVEN a version of this speech twice before.
十多年前，在俄亥俄州斯图本维尔市，两名橄榄球运动员因性侵一名女高中生而被定罪，而其他人则拍摄了这些行为并将视频片段上传到社交媒体。此后，比蒂首次向学生们谈论强奸问题。2024年，一名女性声称自己遭到加拿大冰球协会青少年冠军队多名成员的性侵后，比蒂再次发表了这一演讲。去年，这些球员被宣告无罪，但比蒂仍对事件的情况感到不安——有多名男性参与其中，而那名女性当时处于醉酒状态。
He’d first talked to his students about rape more than a decade ago after two football players in Steubenville, Ohio, were convicted of sexually assaulting a high school girl, while others videoed the acts and posted clips to social media. Beatty gave a second version of the speech in 2024 after a woman said she was sexually assaulted by multiple members of Hockey Canada’s junior championship team. The players were found not guilty last year, but Beatty remained troubled by the circumstances — multiple men were involved, and the woman was intoxicated.
当比蒂读到康奈尔案的相关报道时，他感到同样的愤怒。不过，他不确定自己是否还有新的观点可以表达。后来，几位女同事告诉他，她们希望他能再次发声。
When Beatty read about the Cornell case, he felt the same outrage. He wasn’t sure if he had anything new to say, though. Then a few of his female colleagues told him they hoped he would speak up again.
他决定，如果自己不抓住每一个机会，教导自己负责的这350名男孩如何做人，他将无法原谅自己。
He couldn’t live with himself, he decided, if he didn’t take every opportunity to teach the 350 boys in his charge how to be.
比蒂今年59岁——他自称“一个老头”——但他还记得当个青少年有多难。20世纪70年代和80年代，他曾就读于皇家圣乔治学校，当时他渴望有人能引导自己。有一次，他的挚友在游乐园事故中丧生，悲痛欲绝的比蒂徒步走到一位老师家，请教他该如何承受这份失去。
Beatty is 59 — “An old man,” he calls himself — but he remembered how hard it was to be a teenage guy. He’d attended Royal St. George’s in the 1970s and ‘80s, and he’d yearned then for guidance. Once, after his best friend died in an amusement park accident, Beatty had walked, grief-stricken, to a teacher’s home to ask how to survive the loss.
那位老师曾帮助比蒂度过了人生中最艰难的时期。比蒂希望自己能成为那样的导师，但当他思考该如何谈论康奈尔时，他担心学生们会觉得自己因为是男孩就被贴上了“坏孩子”的标签。比蒂不想让他们感到被“有毒的男子气概”逼入绝境。羞耻感无法激励他们。
That teacher had helped Beatty navigate the hardest times of his life. Beatty wanted to be that kind of mentor, but as he considered what to say about Cornell, he worried his students would feel labeled as bad just because they’re boys. Beatty didn’t want them to feel painted into the corner of toxic masculinity. Shame would not inspire them.
整个周末，比蒂都在焦虑该说些什么。他和92岁的父亲以及正值大学年龄的儿子们谈了谈，然后，在周日晚上，他带着笔记本电脑下到地下室，打开布法比尔队的橄榄球比赛，把声音调成静音，开始写作。我深感震惊。
All weekend, Beatty fretted over what to say. He talked to his 92-year-old father and his college-aged sons, then, Sunday night, he carried his laptop down to his basement, turned on the Buffalo Bills football game, muted it, and began to write. I am horrified.
他从键盘上拿开了手。这学期早些时候，他曾看到其中一个学生——一个身材高大的棒球运动员——在美术课上绣花。他也看到其他男孩朗诵诗歌。他曾和这些男孩一起走进森林，也倾听他们谈论自己的父母、自己的恐惧，以及那些他们很少透露的内心挣扎。
He took his hands off the keyboard. Earlier that semester, he’d watched one of his boys, a giant baseball player, embroider flowers in art class. He’d watched other boys recite poetry. He’d traveled to the woods with them, and he’d listened as they talked about their parents, their fears, the secret struggles they rarely revealed.
我知道你们的善良，知道你们的公平感，也知道你们彼此关怀。我相信你们。
I know your kindness, your sense of fairness, and the care you show for one another. I believe in you.
比蒂明白，善良的人也可能在恶劣的环境中迷失。青少年时期，他曾眼睁睁看着同学霸凌一个体重超重的男孩，却从未出声反对。他知道，即使明知道某些事不对劲，普通人也可能选择沉默。他知道沉默会让人感到多么安全。我知道。孩子们，请相信我，我真的知道。
Beatty knew good people could falter in terrible situations. As a teenager, he’d watched without protest as his peers bullied an overweight boy. He knew decent people could remain silent even when they knew something wasn’t right. He knew how safe silence could feel. I know. Boys, please believe me, I know.
比蒂一直写到深夜。他一遍又一遍地阅读这篇演讲稿，还取消了早上的预约。他虽然紧张，但周一早上站在讲台上，望向眼前的这些男孩时，那种焦虑感消失了。他们在认真倾听。
BEATTY WROTE LATE into the night. He read the speech again and again, and he canceled his early morning appointments. He was nervous, but as he stood at the pulpit Monday morning and looked out at his boys, that anxiety disappeared. They were listening.
比蒂常常想起他一起长大的那个胖男孩。年轻时，他就知道自己的沉默伤害了那个男孩，但比蒂当时以为，他是在保护自己。然而在接下来的几十年里，他逐渐意识到，沉默同样也腐蚀了他自己。如今他明白，沉默会让年轻人变得麻木。它会让他们不敢寻求帮助，也会让他们感到孤立无援。
Beatty thought often of the overweight boy he grew up with. He’d known as a young man that his silence hurt that boy, but Beatty had thought he was protecting himself. In the decades since, he’d realized that silence had corroded him, too. Silence numbed young men, he knew now. It stopped them from asking for help. It left them feeling alone.
“沉默常常被包装成一种男子气概——所谓‘沉默寡言的强者’。别相信这种说法，”他对那些男孩说，“那并不是真正的坚强。”“真正有男子气概、真正强大的做法，是打破沉默，”他继续说道，“我们需要勇敢，而不是沉默。要下定决心：现在的你，以及未来的你，都不会选择沉默。”
“Silence can be framed as some manly quality. The strong silent type. Don’t believe that,” he told the boys. “It is not strong.”“What is truly masculine and strong is breaking silence,” he continued. “We need to be brave. Not silent. Decide that the man you are and the man you will be will not be silent.
在担任校长多年的过程中，比蒂逐渐明白，你不能只是告诉一个男孩“不要做什么”，还必须给他明确的指导。因此，他让学生们把这次演讲当作一次消防演习——为真正的紧急情况做准备。如果有人拿女孩开侮辱性的玩笑，男孩们应该立刻说：“够了！”如果一个男孩分享了女孩的私密照片，收到照片的人应该回应：“别发这个给我，删掉它。”
In his years as headmaster, Beatty had learned that you can’t just tell a boy what not to do. You have to give him clear instructions. And so he told the students to think of his speech as a fire drill — practice for a real emergency. If someone makes a degrading joke about a girl, the boys should say, “That’s enough.”If a boy shares a private photograph of a girl, the recipient should reply, “Don’t send me that. Delete it.”
“当群聊变得刻薄，或者朋友开始谈论某个女孩，仿佛她是一个可以赢得的奖品或可以占有的物品时，你会怎么做？”他问听众，“你会附和吗？你会因为不想让气氛变得尴尬而保持沉默吗？”比蒂鼓励男孩们主动打破这种尴尬。如果他们目睹了攻击行为，就必须尽一切努力阻止它。他们必须大声制止——可以砸碎窗户，可以拉响火警警报，可以打电话给父母，也可以打给他。
“What would you do when a group chat turns cruel, or a friend starts talking about someone as though she is a prize to be won or a possession to be had?” he asked his audience. “Do you join in? Do you stay quiet because you don’t want to make things awkward?”Beatty encouraged the boys to make things awkward. If they witnessed an assault, they needed to do everything in their power to stop it. They needed to be loud. They could break a window, pull a fire alarm. They could call their parents, or they could call him.
他让他们拿出手机，然后报出了自己的电话号码。“用这个号码，”他告诉他们，“当你不知道该怎么办时，就用它；当你需要有人毫无偏见、不计后果地帮助你时，就用它。”他还告诉他们，他爱他们。
He told them to pull out their cellphones, then he gave them his number. Use it, he told them. Use it when you don’t know what to do. Use it when you need someone to help without judgment or consequence. He told them that he loved them.
“我认识你们，”他对他们说，“我知道，那正是你们想成为的那种人，也终将成为的那种人。”比蒂有时会开玩笑说，男孩们身上没什么深奥的东西。他们或许深沉、有内涵，但表达通常并不复杂。几个男孩走出教堂时，只是闷声说了句：“讲得好，先生。”当天下午，其他人在食堂里也向他表达了感谢。
”I know you,” he told them. “I know that’s the kind of man you want to be and the kind of man you will be.”Beatty sometimes joked that there’s nothing profound in boys. They could be deep and substantive, but they weren’t usually complex in their expression. A few grunted “Nice speech, sir” as they filed out of the chapel. Others thanked him in the cafeteria that afternoon.
回到办公室后，他发现大多数人都已经给他发了短信。那些信息都很简短。不止一个人只写了：“嗨，比蒂先生，是我。”尽管如此，比蒂还是感到十分感动。他的学生们终究是有所表达的。眼下，这样就足够了。
When he got back to his office, he saw most had already texted him. They were short messages. More than one had written only, “Hey, Mr. Beatty, it’s me.”Still, Beatty felt emotional. His boys were saying something. For now, that was enough.