Administration Lacks Consistency in its Punishments
By William Mullen ’08
Editor
“The major school rules arise out of the need to maintain the health, safety, and legal responsibilities of the members of the Choate community,” states the Choate Student Handbook. These basic expectations must be present in our lives to ensure the proper environment for study and healthy social interaction. It is a privilege to be a part of this school, and we expect all students to observe the basic rules for maintaining order and decorum while they are enrolled. We hope that adherence to the rules at Choate will encourage good citizenship throughout students’ lives.”
The Student Handbook clearly illustrates what the major school rules are in place for. During the winter term, scarcely a week went by without another prefect losing his/her job or a student being caught or counseled after significant alcohol use. As recently as this past weekend, two underformers called crisis intervention on themselves for alcohol usage.
Is stress the problem? In a News story reported last fall, Director of Counseling Char Davidson estimated approximately 170-210 of 848 students visit the health center each year for counseling. Are the students’ signaling for a change, similar to Headmaster George St. John’s 1929 implementation of a daily “rest period” for 30 minutes before lunch hour? Or does the burden fall upon us, the students to make the right choices?
So far the class of 2008 has gone from being stable to tumultuous. From Fall 2005 when we as third formers entered the school, until winter break in 2007, there were a couple of off-campus parties resulting in major disciplinary action, but zero students were expelled or had “withdrawn under disciplinary investigation”. We were described as leaders who stuck together, not wanting another to fall into the “deep hole of scrambling to find another school,” as one expelled student explained it.
From Winter Break 2007 until now, from our class alone, we have had 8 of 64 prefects, to which the handbook refers to as “the key student leader in the residential life system”, lose their jobs. Student leaders from the Judicial Committee, the Student Council, Peer Educators, the Assessment Team, and team captains undermine their integrity by getting involved in compromising situations both on and off campus. From last year’s winter break until now, no major leadership group has been pristine.
What was it that launched this wave of misbehavior? After our first interaction with college, as our class was introduced to our respective college counselors, did the stress kick in? Was it the law of averages that took a hold of 2008? Or has it been the repetitive inconsistencies in the Deans’ office in interpreting the rules of the school that scourged our class and caused more stress than needed upon many students?
So far we have lost five form members to disciplinary situations from Winter Break 2007, with a number of others escaping from punishment under the counseling wing of the health center by going on medical leave, or signing onto a no-use contract without disciplinary repercussions. Even the counseling route is confusing to many, and with all the grey area surrounding Crisis Intervention, many students are unsure of invoking it.
Some are “puzzled”, as one says, by the significant difference between the handbook and the decisions that the Deans’ Office makes. The handbook clearly states “Any such test that is positive for alcohol results in Probation or Suspension, whether the use occurred on and off campus”. Clearly an asterisk is needed here, as well as other places in the handbook, as the Deans’ now have the authority to modify the written law of the school. Obviously there is a necessary grey area with the even more confusing “administrative responses”, a phrase not unlike the Constitution’s necessary and proper clause allowing broad reach in almost all cases that do “not demand clear disciplinary responses”. However, how would a positive test for alcohol not merit a clear disciplinary response?
Some, both students and faculty, lament that the administration still does not “have the guts,” as one faculty member told me, to show students what the consequences of their actions are. Parents put pressure on the Deans’ office to keep their kids from major action, which would lead to report their actions to their college selections. Point taken, but why do we report any disciplinary actions to college, as at some point the punishments are watered-down so much that the rules stop being followed?
As our most famous alum, John F. Kennedy, who was a troublemaker on this campus in his own right, said in an address to Princeton, the way to lead was “with positive policies, comprehensive programs and consistent principles.” So far, the decisions of the administration has not seemed to carry these same adjectives: “positive”, “comprehensive”, and “consistent” when analyzed after trickling down the gossip wire to students, parents, and faculty members.
The only fix to this flawed structure is a rearrangement of the school’s rules, or a reorganization of the policies of interpretation described in the handbook. The administration should be more consistent with its policies and punishments doled out to the student body. We are a school based on fidelity and integrity. Let that phrase not be tarnished by poor decisions in the leadership of the school that fail to look at the long-term implications of decisions. Such decisions erode the rule of law at Choate and trigger confusion within the student body at large.
