Students of Rules
November 12, 2013
Those who make rules ought to be students of rules. We mean this in at least the two ways this posting and the next will address.
First, rule makers should know the essence of the existing body of rules which they will be responsible for upholding or modifying during the necessary ongoing review of those rules. These rule makers should have a general awareness of when and why each rule was first adopted, how it might have evolved, how it is now applied and what the major compliance problems have been in the past or may be in the future.
This first requirement is as important for those who prepare the rules for the contests – the playing rules – as for those who promulgate the rules that establish the minimum eligibility standards and the maximum limits for competition. In the face of any proposal to eliminate or greatly modify any rule, rule makers must ask what problems may return if they remove the rule that solved those problems.
Dov Seidman writes in how: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything: “Rules, of course, don’t come out of thin air. Legislatures and organizations adopt them usually to proscribe unwanted behaviors but typically in reaction to events. They lower speed limits after automobile accidents become too frequent, regulate pit bulls after a series of dog bites, or institute new expense-tracking procedures after someone is caught trying to get reimbursed for their new iPod. Rules have been established for a reason, but most people are out of touch with the rationale and spirit of why. They don’t read legislative histories and so have a thin, superficial relationship to the rules . . .”
That is not acceptable for those who write, review and revise rules. They have to know where each rule has come from. This is why for the rule makers and for those in our member schools responsible for applying the rules day in and day out, the MHSAA keeps current “The The History, Rationale and Application of the Essential Eligibility Regulations High School Athletics in Michigan."
Tough Love
October 9, 2015
A young Korean woman has lived with my wife and me for two years and will for two years longer. Grace is a graduate of the international school in China where our son and his wife were her teachers; and since living with us, she has graduated from Lansing Community College and moved on to Michigan State University.
Having this student in our home and a son and daughter-in-law as educators in China, living with my wife who once was in charge of refugee resettlement for a large agency in mid-Michigan, and my serving for seven years as president of the board of the Refugee Development Center in Lansing, makes me understanding of and sympathetic to international students.
However, I expect that is not the reputation I enjoy among those who work for student exchange organizations and even among some in our schools who work with the increasing number of international students who are enrolling in Michigan’s secondary schools. They probably view me as an advocate for more restrictive transfer rules for international students, especially regarding F-1 visa students and nonpublic schools.
Guilty as charged. Indeed, I do advocate for higher standards for exchange programs, more vigorous oversight of student placements and more equal application of rules, regardless of the type of visa the student has or the type of school in which that student enrolls.
It is because I see great value in our interaction with people from other nations that I want to assure international student exchanges remain popular in our schools. Nothing jeopardizes the future of international student exchange more than sloppy or shady placements of international students, including last-minute dumping of students by agencies, athletic-related direct placements by agents, and school districts loading up on international students as backfill for declining local enrollments.
As some youth escape brutal hardship in war-torn or impoverished countries and more well-off foreign students stampede to the U.S. to attend U.S. secondary schools, colleges and universities, it will require high doses of tough love. If problems related to athletics increase, so will the chances that all international students will lose all opportunities to participate in varsity level sports in this state.