If Not Now, When?
October 2, 2012
The greatest disappointments I experience in the administration of educational athletics are when I observe the program miss the opportunity to educate students in ways that will instill positive character traits. It happens in little ways every day; and sometimes it happens in really big ways when we fail to require people to accept the consequences of their actions.
During and immediately following a Regional Tennis match several years ago, a student displayed the kind of sportsmanship that offended everyone’s sense of appropriate behavior. There was no question he behaved badly, although the student and parents had many excuses for the behavior.
While the player was not disqualified at the time, his coach, athletic director and principal agreed the player should be withheld from the Final tournament, consistent with suspensions applied to other students in other sports at other times. The parents appealed the decision and the central office overturned the building level decision because “missing the Final tournament was too severe a penalty.” If it had been a regular-season contest, not the MHSAA Finals, the student would have been suspended.
So, what’s the lesson here? There are consequences for inappropriate behavior so long as it’s not an important event for the student and school. What kind of lesson is that?
And what a problem! For this lesson teaches that exceptions will be made for better players and bigger events, that standards of acceptable behavior are related to the persistence of the parents and the prestige of the competition.
The problem is that if people are not held accountable for their behavior in high school athletics, whenever will they? The problem is that if people are not held accountable for their acts – i.e., fail to develop character – a world going bad is going to get there faster.
Persuasion
April 13, 2012
“People are persuaded by relationships more than reasons.”
That’s the one statement I remember from a radio interview I was inattentively listening to during a recent long drive. I don’t remember the topic, the speaker, the interviewer or the radio station; but that single statement soaked further into my soul as the miles passed by.
I began to think of many instances when I gave the benefit of the doubt to a person I knew well. And the times when both sides of a debate had merit but I decided in favor of the source I knew better and trusted more. Relationships.
I thought of my own failures to direct a change or defend the status quo because I depended solely on solid rationale and disregarded the biases and baggage of those I needed to influence. When I didn’t take time to cultivate allies because I was so certain that the idea itself was powerful enough to carry the day. When my confidence that “what was right” would ultimately prevail, but it did not. Relationships.
Twice during the past four months we have seen a preview of how, more frequently in the future, people will attempt to influence decision making in school sports without building genuine relationships. Once as a first strategy, and once as a last resort, a constituent of our state utilized the World Wide Web to generate support for a policy change.
In each case an online petition was initiated that generated, from across the nation and around the world, a large number of emails, many of which were vulgar, profane or ridiculous, triggering all email to the MHSAA through that website to be filtered as spam, never to be seen by the decision-makers. This approach is the antithesis of effective persuasion.
No organization of substance should be swayed by bored souls surfing the web who, by mere chance, stumble across an issue and then ring in, without real knowledge of that issue, and no real stake in its outcome.