Forgiveness is a tough subject. When do you forgive and when do you punish? Of even harder, to what degree do you do both?
I grappled with that every day of my child-rearing years while raising five sons – who, at best, were charming, bright and innovative and at worst, challenging, stubborn and relentlessly trying to outsmart me.
I wasn’t the only one facing these parenting balancing acts. One of my closest friends had three sons. Her middle child had an easy time growing up. He was good looking, athletically gifted, bright and blessed with an engaging personality. All who knew him would remark that “he kinda breezed through life.”
Until his first quarter of his freshman year, that is.
One gray autumn day, he called her up and demanded she come and pick him up immediately from college. “It’s not working out,” he sputtered.
She quickly re-arranged her work schedule and implored her mother to accompany her for moral support. And on the long drive to the university, they tried to figure out what in the world was going on with this kid. When they pulled up to his dorm, her normally vibrant, zestful teen-ager was hunched over, pale-faced and pacing. He jumped into the car, exclaiming, “Let’s get out of here as fast as possible and I’m not going back.”
Over the next few days, she and her husband learned in dribbles why he appeared so out-of-sorts. He was having a hard time adjusting to being away from home for the first time. He was having a hard time adjusting to the anonymity of a large university. He was missing his high school buddies and the familiarity of his high school classes, teachers and coaches. He was just another lowly freshman among a wave of lowly freshman – yet to carve out an identity, find his passion intellectually and his place socially. As a result, his course work was not getting done and his grades were suffering. With final exams looming, failure was a strong possibility.
They took action. They questioned him. They called the university for help. And they learned about the university’s freshman forgiveness program. After all that, they drove him back to school to finish the final two weeks of his semester, assuring him that things would improve.
Under the university’s repeatability rule, students can, with permission from their college, repeat a course they have already taken. The Grade Forgiveness Rule allows undergraduate students to petition to repeat up to three courses and the grade in the repeated course will permanently replace the original grade for the course in the calculation of the student’s cumulative GPA.
How did this policy play out with my friend’s son? After his initial bumpy start, he began feeling more acclimated. And he was ecstatic to learn that he’d get a second chance to improve the grades in the courses he was too depressed to attend to with diligence. And what was the final outcome? Four years later, he graduated with honors, was accepted at a prestigious graduate school and is, today, a well-respected professional in his chosen field.
I hate to think what would have happened to him if he had to spend four years trying to undo the damage he caused in the first quarter of his freshman year to his grade point average.
That’s why I was so gratified to read in the paper that last Tuesday, hundreds of ex-felons took advantage of the passing of Amendment 4 in Florida. This measure expands voting rights to more than 1.2 million felons who were not convicted murderers or sex offenders. They are eligible to register to vote after they complete serving their sentences.
Forgiveness is a tough call to make. But the consequences of giving second chances is worth pondering – both in our personal and professional lives. As citizens. As lawmakers. As parents.
Keep Preserving Your Bloom,
Iris