Whole People

I am a big believer in the concept of whole people. On Thursday evening a football player from the University of Oregon in a state of high emotion made a terrible decision and struck a player from the opposing team. He also had to be restrained from striking others.
The player in question is 22 years old and had up to that point had a promising career even to the point of being mentioned as a potential Heisman candidate.

Within 24 hours his coach announced that his collegiate football career, at least at Oregon, was essentially over. The coach did also announce that the young man would be allowed to remain on scholarship with the team to continue to provide him with the structure he needs to fully develop as a person. Sounds like pretty good thinking to me.

In the heat of emotion a young man made a terrible judgement. His coach decided not to let that singular act define him. In the last 48 hours I have seen the young man and the program vilified. People have screamed for his prosecution and used it as an attack on collegiate athletics. Really? Is this what we have come to? Is it really unreasonable that the program took 12 hours to decide an appropriate course of action?

I have been a practicing human resources executive for over thirty years. In a number of times during the course of my career I have participated in deciding the appropriate corrective action to take when an employee has made a bad decision. I say corrective action, because that is my philosophy. The intent is to correct and to create a learning and a different outcome for the future not to punish.

I have seen occasions in college football and in professional sports where athletes were arrested and then allowed to play. That in my mind is inappropriate. We literally have a situation in my home town where the commissioner of a local utility was arrested on felony drug and weapons charges and is claiming harassment. She has indicated (and her supporters agree) that this should not be cause to request her resignation. I wonder how many of her supporters are baying for the young football players blood?

I applaud the decision on the part of the coach. He took in my mind appropriate action. The behavior was unequivocably unacceptable. He also took into the context the whole person who is this young man and said to throw him away and remove the structure of the team represented actions that were too harsh. College isn't about sports it is about education, educating the whole person. An important statement was made, we look at you in totality. If you make a poor decision you will be sanctioned, you will not be thrown away.

I also hope the media will get bored with replaying the incident over and over again. They aren't playing it as a learning experience, but capitalizing on a tragedy. Shame on them, shame on us.

For those of us that are parents I wonder how we will react when it is our child that makes an error in judgement, and trust me they will. Will we scream for their arrest and banishment, or will we we plead for their whole person to be taken into context? I think in our hearts we know the answer.

I am going to try and keep dealing with whole people, how about you?