In the Autumn of 1955, working-class Hebrew teenager David Greene (Brendan Fraser), from Scranton, Pennsylvania, receives a football scholarship to St. Matthew's, an exclusive Massachusetts prep school, for his senior year due to his grades and ability to play football. Even back home David was used to dealing with Anti-Semitism and frequently got into fights with the white Neo-Nazi gangs who targeted David due to his Hebrew race. Alan Greene (Ed Lauter) tells David that St Matthews is a school that 2 presidents went to. He asks David to fit in and not fight through life. Upon arrival, he meets his teammates Rip Van Kelt (Randall Batinkoff), Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon), Jack Connors (Cole Hauser), and his roommate Chris Reece (Chris O'Donnell), the most well-known and popular students who are from well-to-do families and learns of the school's cherished honor code system. Soon learning that his new friends are Anti-Semites, he suppresses his background. "Mack" McGivern (Andrew Lowery) is the joker of the bunch, but not in the team as he is frail. Mr. Cleary (Zeljko Ivanek), French language teacher is also the hostel warden, and doesn't like the boys as they mock him on his rounds. Dillon doesn't like David as Dillon was supposed to be the team quarterback until the coach decided to bring in David. The school had been losing to their rivals for 3 yrs in a row and the alums were upset and wanted the coach to do something to break the losing streak. David was the answer. Dillon also struggles in the history class. McGivern is flunking French and is worried that he might not get into Princeton as 5 generations of his family have gone there. Cleary assigns 25% of the grade to a class monologue in French and consistently harasses McGivern during his speech. He humiliates McGivern. That night Mcgivern is found in his French class, alone in the catatonic state. David confronts Cleary for pushing McGivern till he broke. David and the entire student community retaliates by putting Cleary's beloved vintage car inside his room and filling the room with smoke. David becomes the team hero (Coach McDevitt (Kevin Tighe), football coach) and attracts beautiful debutante Sally Wheeler (Amy Locane), whom Dillon claims is his girlfriend (But David spoke to Sally and she told him that she not was seeing Dillon. She starts dating David). At a alum dinner, Dillon finally realizes that Sally and David are together and is even more angry. After a victory over the school's chief rival St. Luke's (in which David is hailed as the hero by everyone), Dillon inadvertently discovers David's Judaism (when he speaks to the school trustee, who says that St Luke's would never have taken a Hebrew to win a game). Out of jealousy, Dillon sensationalizes this, causing Sally and his teammates to turn against David. David's classmates, led by Richard "McGoo" Collins (Anthony Rapp) and his bodyguard-like roommate Chesty Smith (Ben Affleck), constantly harass him, with only Reece and another unnamed student remaining loyal. The final straw comes when he finds a sign above his bed bearing a swastika and the words "Go home Hebrew." Finally having enough, he furiously posts a public confrontation with whoever made the sign outside the building the following night. No one shows up, however, and David calls out the students' cowardice when he sees them looking out their dorm windows. Sally refuses to meet David anymore and breaks up with him. Overwhelmed by pressure from his prestigious family, Dillon uses a crib sheet to cheat in an important history exam. David and Van Kelt spot him doing so but keep quiet. After the exam, Dillon gets pushed while leaving class and drops the sheet on the floor. When the teacher, Mr. Geirasch (Michael Higgins), discovers it, he informs the class that he will fail all of them if the cheater keeps silent. He instructs the students, led by Van Kelt, the head prefect, to find the cheat. When David confronts Dillon and threatens to turn him in if he does not confess, Dillon tells him about his pressure, apologizes for his actions against him and unsuccessfully attempts to buy David's silence with money. Just when David is about to reveal Dillon to the other students as the cheat, Dillon accuses David. They fight until Van Kelt breaks it up and tells them to leave and let the rest of the class decide who is being honest. Both agree to do so. The majority of the class blame David out of antisemitic prejudice, while Reece, the unnamed student, and Connors, going against his own self-professed antisemitism, argue that it is unlike David to cheat or lie. Despite this, the class votes to convict David, prompting Van Kelt to tell him to report to the elitist headmaster, Dr. Bartram (Peter Donat), to confess to cheating. David goes to Bartram's office and says that he was the cheater. Unbeknownst to him, Van Kelt has already told the headmaster that the real offender was Dillon. Bartram tells David and Van Kelt that they should have reported the offense, but he absolves the both of them. As David leaves the headmaster's office, he sees an expelled Dillon leaving the school. Dillon says that he will be accepted to Harvard anyway and that years later everybody will have forgotten about his incident. The two coldly exchange final insults to each other before Dillon leaves.
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