“The
story you are about to see is true. The
names have been changed to protect the innocent.”
I am old enough to remember those as the
opening lines from the 1950s and 60s television show Dragnet. Dragnet was an ancestor of police procedurals
such as CSI and Law and Order, only without episodes being available on cable
any time of the day or night. I remember
Dragnet for three reasons. The main
character, Detective Joe Friday, wanted “just the facts.” Jack Webb, who played Friday, walked without
moving his arms. And the names were
changed to protect the innocent. I
always wondered whether names should be changed to protect the guilty as well.
Last
week there was an interesting discussion on the e-list maintained by the
Association of College Counselors in Independent Schools, better known by its
acronym, ACCIS. The Director of College
Counseling at an independent school (I have omitted names to protect both the
innocent and the guilty) asked for help with a discipline case involving the
daughter of not one, but two, trustees.
The daughter had been suspended for alcohol and marijuana use while on a
school trip, and the parents are worried that the incident might ruin the
daughter’s chances of getting into schools like Stanford and the Ivies. The counselor asked colleagues to share
experiences and wisdom.
The
query and the responses it generated raise a number of interesting questions.
Is having two spouses serving on a school’s board at the same time a good idea?
Should children of board members get special treatment? Are kids allowed to make—and be forgiven
for—mistakes? Has the volume of
applications at highly-selective institutions changed the admissions process
such that it is designed to find reasons to deny a student rather than reasons
to admit?
Disciplinary
incidents are the Scylla and college admission the Charybdis of working in an
independent school. Navigating between
the two is an adventure inspired at times by Homer and at other times by Homer
Simpson. In each case a school must walk
a tightrope, balancing what is best for the individual with what is best for
the community. The goal is teaching hard
lessons by holding a student accountable but making sure there is a safety net
so the consequences aren’t catastrophic.
The
most catastrophic of those consequences is losing acceptance to college. Parents in the heat of a disciplinary
situation are perfectly willing for their child to be punished, but want to
withhold information from going to colleges.
One mother argued in a masterful parsing of words that her son wasn’t
really suspended from school because
he had received an in-school suspension.
Discipline cases force a school to examine the consonance between
mission and procedures. How important is
the college preparation/college placement part of a school’s mission? Is discipline purely internal, or is there an
obligation to inform colleges of offenses, even recognizing that independent
school students are suspended for offenses that would be ignored or even
laughed at in other school settings?
I
have been fortunate to spend most of my career at a school that is established,
that is secure enough in its mission to have expelled two different Board
members’ children on the same day, and that balances accountability and
compassion. We have a strong honor code,
and a consequence of the code is that students are obligated to report
disciplinary incidents on college applications.
In the case of an honor or disciplinary offense resulting in suspension
committed after applications have already been submitted, we require students
to contact the college, allowing us to come behind them with expressions of
support. Most of the offenses committed
by my students fall into the “stupid” category rather than the “evil” category,
but I can’t think of a case where a student lost an opportunity because of the
offense.
They
are more likely to get in trouble because of their explanation than the offense
itself. Several years ago, a student was
suspended after being caught with a beer in a car at the Junior-Senior formal
dance. He neglected to report the
offense to his first-choice college, where he was on the Wait List, despite the
fact that the college explicitly required.
Once admitted off the Wait List, we made him contact the Admissions
Office. The Dean of Admission required
him to come to campus to explain the suspension. He told the Dean that he had the beer because
he hadn’t planned to go to the dance.
The Dean asked if he didn’t look out of place at the dance, given that
everyone else was wearing a tux. “I was
wearing a tux,” the student admitted, leading the dean to ask if the student normally
drove around the West End of Richmond on a Friday night wearing a tux. The student ultimately was admitted, but the
explanation raised far more serious questions than the offense.
The
reasons for revealing disciplinary information to colleges is both
philosophical and practical. The
philosopher W.D. Ross argued that an individual should determine his ethical
duty in a given case by first identifying prima
facie (at first glance) duties.
Prima facie duties arise out of relationships. As a counselor, I have a number of prima
facie duties in a discipline case that arise out of various roles and
relationships that I find myself in. My
relationship to the student is one of those, but I also have obligations to my
school, to my profession, to my own personal sense of right and wrong, and to
the colleges with whom I have a relationship.
Ross doesn’t tell you what your duty is, just how to weigh the various
prima facie duties present. From a
practical standpoint, there is potential damage to the student, the school, and
future applicants if a school looks to be withholding information, and in the
age of social media it is possible and maybe even likely that a college will
hear about disciplinary offenses.
The
fact that I am old enough to remember Dragnet probably marks me as a dinosaur
professionally, and I’m okay with that.
I want to be part of a profession where relationships and trust are
valued, where we believe in being honest and transparent, and where we are not
afraid to let kids grow from the mistakes they may make. I’m grateful for my colleagues on the college
side who allow me to keep the faith.