Set in the 1950s, "School Ties" tells a story of David Greene (Brendan Fraser), a working-class Jewish teenager from Scranton, Pennsylvania who is given a football scholarship to an exclusive Massachusetts prep school for his senior year due to his grades and ability to play football. Upon his 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) who are the big men on campus (the most well known and popular students) from well-to-do families and learns of the school's cherished honor code system. Soon learning that his new friends are prejudiced against Jews, he suppresses his background.