Now is as good a time as any to really voice how much I truly HATED the staff at St. Joesph's. They seemed throughout the movie to want to beat down Arthur. I don't know if they didn't know how they would be perceived on film, but how this school didn't get burned to the ground when this movie cam out amazes me. They really created some incredible villains there.
See, I thought of them as a part of the system too. And I didn't really come away with such a negative image.
I really thought they could have cut Arthur a break. Maybe not letting him stay in school, but when the parents came back years later to get his transcripts and they were still playing hardball making these parents come up with money they didn't have to try and help their son graduate really felt cold hearted.
I can see what you're saying but I feel like that's how real life works. Maybe I'm far too cynical or something but my feeling was that they had moved past Arthur and at this point, he was just an ex-student who hadn't paid his fees. It wasn't 'years later'. Just a year or max. 2 years later. The way that schools like St.Joe's prolly subsidize their other scholarship programs (like the one that helped William stay there) is by making sure the non-scholarship students pay their fees, right? I felt bad for Arthur too but I didn't blame the staff as much as the entire system of athletic scholarships that basically reward students till such time as they stay star athletes but gets withdrawn as soon as an athlete hits a slump.
As someone who came from Joe's I feel that I can weigh in on this. At St. Joe's Ping is rightfully viewed as a god, but this isn't just because he is the high school basketball coach in Illinois state history. He legitimately cares about every kid he recruits and goes out of his way to bend, and break, the rules as much as he can to help them out. He does this for non-players as well.
I worked every summer at Joe's to help pay off my tuition, and so did a lot of other athletes, and we actually worked, we weren't just showing up and doing nothing. I worked with Ping most of the time and he was a great guy who was always going to bat for kids. When a kid by the name of Brian Tylor who's only connection to Ping was having him as substitute homeroom teacher every once in a while lost his father, Ping fronted all the money for his freshman ear at Penn State.
I know that at one point I was considering quitting wrestling and leaving the school and Ping talked me out of it. He didn't talk to me about wrestling or anything like that, but about how my education was important so even if I quit the team he wanted me to stay at the school because that would help my chances at the next level. He was always like that, looking out for every student, not just his players.
As for the staff, they were doing their job, school is a business, I had to pay for my transcripts and so should Arthur.