In a must-read piece today, the Washington Post’s
Jason Horowitz reports that Mitt Romney was a prep school meanie. The
story, which Horowitz got independently from five of Romney’s former
classmates, is that after spring break in 1965, Romney came back to
Cranbrook, his all-male private school in Michigan, and noticed that
John Lauber, a new student a year younger than him, was wearing his hair
bleached blond and hanging down over one eye. Lauber generally got
teased for looking different and seeming gay, though he was not out.
Romney’s friend at the time, Matthew Friedemann, recalls that Romney
said of Lauber, “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at
him!” Romney kept complaining, and a few days later led a “prep school
posse” that “came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the
ground.”
Here’s the clincher: “As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears,
screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of
scissors.”
Remembering the incident, one witness told the Post, “to
this day it troubles me.” Another called it “vicious.” Friedemann said
he feels badly he didn’t try to stop it. A fourth witness ran into
Lauber at an airport bar three decades later and apologized to him.
