MONROE - Whether or not student athletes should be subject to "guilt by association" has Monroe school board members arguing more than usual.
The topic originally surfaced at a board meeting in August and re-emerged Sept. 28, when Monroe High School Principal Chris Medenwaldt and Athletic Director Dave Hirsbrunner brought this year's athletic handbook to the board for approval.
Board members temporarily rejected the specific "guilt by association" line in the handbook's code of conduct but said they would discuss the issue further for future revisions of the handbook. They opted to remove the language in order to approve the athletic handbook so coaches and athletes could use it as soon as possible for fall sports.
According to District Administrator Cory Hirsbrunner, this is the first time the athletic handbook has been reviewed or modified in years.
Brian Keith, the board's treasurer, suggested the inclusion of a "guilt by association" clause in the handbook at the Aug. 10 meeting and argued to keep the language on Sept. 28 to give students "more power" to curb their fellow athletes' bad behavior.
He demonstrated that a student could say to another, "No, you can't drink, no you can't do drugs, no you can't do this, because it's going to affect me," if such a rule was in the athletic handbook.
"The whole point - I mean, even when I was a student - (of) the code of conduct was to try to make sure that the athletes are held to a higher standard, because they are leaders in the district, they are leaders in the school," Keith said.
But board members Les Bieneman and Michael Boehme said they wanted the "guilt by association" line out of the handbook. Bieneman said the rest of the code of conduct already holds athletes to a high standard.
The clause that was removed read: "III. Guilt by Association - A student may be in violation of this code of conduct due to the attribution of guilt with which he/she associates, rather than because of any crime that they have committed."
Board members agreed to replace that line with the one that followed (clause "a"), which now reads: "Students should be aware that if they are part of a group that is engaged in activities contrary to school rules, they may come under suspicion and be subject to investigation and/or discipline if that is deemed appropriate by the administration. It is wise, therefore, either to prevent the wrongdoing, or failing that, to remove one's self from the group as soon as possible without putting one's self at risk."
No one objected to clause "a," although its second sentence caused a smaller argument. Amy Bazley suggested removing "or failing that" so students have two clear options rather than a prioritized first course of action, but Keith disagreed because he said an athlete, as a leader, should try to stop the wrongdoing before doing anything else.
Others noted that students develop leadership skills over time, so younger students shouldn't be held to the same expectations as upperclassmen.
"They can be held accountable. That's the problem - they're not today," Keith said. "I know situations where there are kids that go to parties where there's alcohol involved and they don't drink and they think they're OK. And that's not right."
Bob Erb, the board president, said he wanted coaches and administrators to have the ability to use their discretion on when to invoke guilt by association, suggesting it might be appropriate in a hypothetical situation where an athlete beats up a student and the fellow athletes who witness it do nothing to stop the situation.
When asked whether administrators would be able to work with the clause, Medenwaldt said he kept the language vague in clause "a" - "may come under suspicion" instead of "will" - because it would be difficult for administrators to be compelled by the code of conduct to deal with a case that lacks real evidence.
"I'm not a fan ... of kids being held accountable for someone else's actions," Medenwaldt said.
Bazley isn't a fan of guilt by association either, but said if it's going to be included, there should be a self-reporting clause with it. That would give a student-athlete who participated in - or didn't attempt to stop - a violation some leniency if he or she reported the violation.
"They should be given a little bit of encouragement to take responsibility," Bazley said.
"You want this more as a teaching tool to teach a student how to behave and what's the right thing to do. And really, to me, guilt by association is more making a student aware that they should leave what's going on - not that they should necessarily try to change the behavior of the people they're around, because that's a huge task - but that they themselves should say, "Hey, this isn't for me. I should get out of here if I can. I don't want to be associated with this.'"
The approved language can be found on page 18 of the 2015-16 Monroe High School Athletic/Activities Handbook, under Penalties, then III.
Hirsbrunner said the athletic handbook will be brought back to the board for review or revision every year around July, like the student handbook.
August's handbook discussion included the suggestion to eventually add a new code of conduct for parents and sporting event spectators in order to curb the bad reputation Monroe fans have developed at other schools in the Badger conference. Scott Schmidt, the board's vice president, cautioned the board to take its time in developing a parent code of conduct.
"No matter what we do, we'll be stepping on some toes," Schmidt said.
The topic originally surfaced at a board meeting in August and re-emerged Sept. 28, when Monroe High School Principal Chris Medenwaldt and Athletic Director Dave Hirsbrunner brought this year's athletic handbook to the board for approval.
Board members temporarily rejected the specific "guilt by association" line in the handbook's code of conduct but said they would discuss the issue further for future revisions of the handbook. They opted to remove the language in order to approve the athletic handbook so coaches and athletes could use it as soon as possible for fall sports.
According to District Administrator Cory Hirsbrunner, this is the first time the athletic handbook has been reviewed or modified in years.
Brian Keith, the board's treasurer, suggested the inclusion of a "guilt by association" clause in the handbook at the Aug. 10 meeting and argued to keep the language on Sept. 28 to give students "more power" to curb their fellow athletes' bad behavior.
He demonstrated that a student could say to another, "No, you can't drink, no you can't do drugs, no you can't do this, because it's going to affect me," if such a rule was in the athletic handbook.
"The whole point - I mean, even when I was a student - (of) the code of conduct was to try to make sure that the athletes are held to a higher standard, because they are leaders in the district, they are leaders in the school," Keith said.
But board members Les Bieneman and Michael Boehme said they wanted the "guilt by association" line out of the handbook. Bieneman said the rest of the code of conduct already holds athletes to a high standard.
The clause that was removed read: "III. Guilt by Association - A student may be in violation of this code of conduct due to the attribution of guilt with which he/she associates, rather than because of any crime that they have committed."
Board members agreed to replace that line with the one that followed (clause "a"), which now reads: "Students should be aware that if they are part of a group that is engaged in activities contrary to school rules, they may come under suspicion and be subject to investigation and/or discipline if that is deemed appropriate by the administration. It is wise, therefore, either to prevent the wrongdoing, or failing that, to remove one's self from the group as soon as possible without putting one's self at risk."
No one objected to clause "a," although its second sentence caused a smaller argument. Amy Bazley suggested removing "or failing that" so students have two clear options rather than a prioritized first course of action, but Keith disagreed because he said an athlete, as a leader, should try to stop the wrongdoing before doing anything else.
Others noted that students develop leadership skills over time, so younger students shouldn't be held to the same expectations as upperclassmen.
"They can be held accountable. That's the problem - they're not today," Keith said. "I know situations where there are kids that go to parties where there's alcohol involved and they don't drink and they think they're OK. And that's not right."
Bob Erb, the board president, said he wanted coaches and administrators to have the ability to use their discretion on when to invoke guilt by association, suggesting it might be appropriate in a hypothetical situation where an athlete beats up a student and the fellow athletes who witness it do nothing to stop the situation.
When asked whether administrators would be able to work with the clause, Medenwaldt said he kept the language vague in clause "a" - "may come under suspicion" instead of "will" - because it would be difficult for administrators to be compelled by the code of conduct to deal with a case that lacks real evidence.
"I'm not a fan ... of kids being held accountable for someone else's actions," Medenwaldt said.
Bazley isn't a fan of guilt by association either, but said if it's going to be included, there should be a self-reporting clause with it. That would give a student-athlete who participated in - or didn't attempt to stop - a violation some leniency if he or she reported the violation.
"They should be given a little bit of encouragement to take responsibility," Bazley said.
"You want this more as a teaching tool to teach a student how to behave and what's the right thing to do. And really, to me, guilt by association is more making a student aware that they should leave what's going on - not that they should necessarily try to change the behavior of the people they're around, because that's a huge task - but that they themselves should say, "Hey, this isn't for me. I should get out of here if I can. I don't want to be associated with this.'"
The approved language can be found on page 18 of the 2015-16 Monroe High School Athletic/Activities Handbook, under Penalties, then III.
Hirsbrunner said the athletic handbook will be brought back to the board for review or revision every year around July, like the student handbook.
August's handbook discussion included the suggestion to eventually add a new code of conduct for parents and sporting event spectators in order to curb the bad reputation Monroe fans have developed at other schools in the Badger conference. Scott Schmidt, the board's vice president, cautioned the board to take its time in developing a parent code of conduct.
"No matter what we do, we'll be stepping on some toes," Schmidt said.