When this post goes live, it's probably very hot in New England, so I posted this photo to remind us that most things are cyclical...including my term as a dean. A month ago, my first class to shepherd through Hotchkiss graduated. In a little over a month, I'll join my next class on campus and start the process over again.
I hope, this time through, to make fewer mistakes. Without revealing the identities of the students involved, I'm going to share one of my mistakes in the hopes that I never repeat it.
One 2025 told me a lie, saying that she was at Chapel and had been mistakenly marked absent. Knowing that my system for verifying Chapel attendance is to ask about the programming, this '25 told me what happened in Chapel that day and said she was sitting next to her best friend. Having seen her best friend without her at the entrance to the program, I knew that she wasn't telling me the truth. There was, therefore, no reason for me to ask the friend to verify or deny the claim.
That said, asking the present friend would put her in the position either dishonestly to corroborate her friend's falsehood or honestly to reveal the lie. I assumed my asking would put the girl in a tough position and might cause rifts in their friendship. After the lying student's Discipline Committee gathering, I told the 2025 that I didn't want to put her friend in the position of feeling like she had to lie on her friend's behalf. I told her that it wasn't nice of her to put her friend in that position.
When I was talking, later, to the friend about something else, the friend let me know that she would never have considered lying for her best friend. She said that they had already talked about rules at Hotchkiss and confirmed with each other that they wouldn't ever risk a bad outcome for themselves by saving the other in a bad situation.
To be clear, she didn't feel one ounce of anger about her friend's lie; she was angry at me for assuming that she'd lie to protect her friend. She was right that I had no reason to question her honesty. In the three and a half years I'd known her, she had never been anything but direct and forthright with me. She was right that I was making an assumption, the same assumption that I believed her friend made, which was that she'd have (at best) a tough time deciding whether or not to lie to help her friend.
I love that telling the truth wasn't a difficult decision for her. I love that she was brave enough to call me out on my assumption. I love that her honesty will help me become a better dean and educator. I shouldn't have made an assumption about her. What do you think?
It was kind of you to be concerned about the repercussions of checking the alibi with the miscreant’s friend. That might go beyond the limits of your responsibility though, or anyone’s ability.
I think if I were in your position, I’d also feel ambivalent about the whole idea of making Chapel compulsory in the first place, whether it is a religious requirement or something less spiritual. If a student wanted to opt out, but couldn’t, they would be in the position of being punished or being dishonest. I wonder how students feel about Chapel being compulsory.
You’re right. I need to think about why I don’t always want to follow up. I need to remember that nothing I do or say makes a kid lie or tell the truth. They make those decisions based on their values.
Yes, we have lots of required appointments for kids that they might not attend if they were optional. The programming is not religious. I think we keep it mandatory because (1) it’s always been that way, (2) we think it’s valuable for the kids to be there, and (3) it’s a checkpoint during the day when all kids are accounted for. I wonder what would happen if we changed our attendance policies to make more things optional. My guess is that the kids who most need to hear what’s going on would be the ones to skip.
Sounds like you handled it perfectly. You called the first kid on it, saying she shouldn’t put a friend in that position, and that was true, whether the friend resented it or not, and you left the second kid out of it because you already had all the information you needed.
But I didn’t leave the other kid out. I mentioned her to the guilty kid, saying that I thought she put her friend in a rotten position.