Trophy case reflections. (My View).

I GREW UP IN A SPORTS SUB-CULTURE. My father was a basketball coach at the beginning of a long and successful career. When your team wins, spring is the time to harvest trophies. I would go with my dad to awards banquets, where we would politely eat cold chicken, hard green peas, and a block of Neapolitan ice cream. My dad would be introduced. He would walk to a podium and speak modestly of his team's accomplishments. Then he would be honored with a loving cup, a plaque, a serving tray, a three-tiered sports statue, and on one occasion, an engraved sterling silver cigarette case.

The spring of 1961 was an especially trophy-filled season. My father's St. Joseph's College team peaked at the right moment and joined Ohio State, Cincinnati, and Utah in the NCAA's fabled Final Four in Kansas City. They captured third place and returned to Philadelphia as conquering heroes, clutching their trophy, and savoring an unforgettable season.

By the age often, I knew trophies, and knowing them initiated me into a lifetime of learning about honor's joy and dishonor's sorrow.

Honor

Trophies gave me my first mental model of what honor was and how it worked. I was fortunate to see the rituals of work that preceded the rituals of achievement: the grueling practices, the meticulous scouting reports, the late night strategy sessions. I witnessed carefully planned ceremonies: how honor is often given in the name of a community and accepted on behalf of a group. When I traveled with my dad's team, I'd spend the long hours before tip-off studying the trophy cases at other colleges. Every college proudly displayed its shrines to excellence, crammed with elegant tributes to exceptional effort and high achievement.

When you stare into a community's trophy case, whether in the gym, or classroom or chapel, you see a diorama of powerful memories, You see a people's finest moments being projected from the past to posterity. You see an institution's pride in itself as an honor-bearing and honor-conferring place. You see into the heart of a college's self-respect: the values it stands for, and the reputation it will defend at great cost.

By way of contrast, to stare into my Baltimore Catechism was to see 499 matter-of-fact questions and answers about the eternal salvation of my soul. As a fourth-grader at the Immaculate Heart of Mary fulfilled School, I had a fair grasp on the names of state capitals and the exact order of the U.S. presidents. But I knew my catechism, and it instructed me about a model of honor that had nothing to do with trophies. The catechism did not extol standards of achievement, public recognition, community ritual, or collective memory. The Baltimore Catechism's model of honor was about an ethic of quiet, invisible service done out of duty and habit--without any promise of acknowledgement, let alone reward.

This model was described in answers 191 and 192 as the chief corporal and spiritual works of mercy. These works of mercy ran the gamut of civic engagement: sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry, educating the ignorant, bearing wrongs patiently, and the counseling of the doubtful (the kind of mercy professors often feel an acute need for late in the spring term).

The Catechism made it clear that works of mercy were obligatory and private, or they were nothing at all. You did them to bring some measure of relief to vulnerable neighbors. To do them for the approval of others was to undo them in the eyes of God. The catechism carried a clear message: There was more to life than chasing trophies.

At the age of ten, I was locked in the grip of these two contrasting conceptions of honor: one secular and one sacred, one devoted to excellence, the other to compassion; one entailing fame, the other anonymity; one aimed at doing well, the other at doing good. I haven't told you this story because I think it is particularly unique. I don't believe I've ever known a member of the Carleton community who was not at some stage of reconciling the demands of achievement and service. You don't need to be reminded that we've assigned ourselves and embraced this double identity.

Dishonor 

I tell this story so that you can imagine how these childhood--perhaps childish--models of honor were upended and tested by the events of the spring of 1961. The facts are simple and sad. On April 27th, New York District Attorney Frank Hogan announced that three of my father's players, including his senior co-captains, had accepted bribes from gamblers to shave points in or lose three regular season games. Jesuit justice at St. Joseph's was swift: The three players were immediately expelled.

The co-captains, high draft picks of the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks, were barred for life by the NBA. In August, the NCAA stripped St. Joe's of their third place standing and revoked the trophy that the players are pictured holding in the Sports Illustrated story about the scandal. And so began my education about dishonor, a curriculum that instructs me still.

I learned at the age of ten that dishonor doesn't discriminate. It doesn't respect names or status, votive candles or holy water. If given the opportunity, dishonor will install itself as an invited, but unwelcome guest even at Jesuit colleges where seniors take ethics courses. It saddled me with a lifetime of questions: Who to admire? How to detect, in the phrase of the

Talented Mr. Ripley, a "fake somebody"? Why is it important, as we now say, to walk our talk?

It took me eight years to want to learn anything more about these three college students I had known and idolized, and who shattered my illusions. Finally as a first year student at Bucknell, I found my way to the bound periodicals and read the Sports Illustrated account of what they did. In so doing, I registered for the longest course I've ever taken--a course I call Dishonor 101. The readings are extensive, but there is no required text.

What I've learned

Cases of dishonor begin with exemption thinking about ethical obligation. Exemption thinking is that half-audible interior monologue in which we seek permission to get out of something we ought to do. Or get into something we know we should avoid. There's nothing wrong with such thinking. Thinking of exemptions for cause and conscience is a vital part of moral reckoning. A community without exemption thinking is a cult. And a community in which everyone is habitually self-exempting is not a community; it is bedlam.

Making his living somewhere between tyranny and anarchy is Randy Cohen, the New York Times Magazine's ethical exemptions expert. Cohen positions himself at the ethical net and returns soft lobs to exemption thinking sent in by readers. Still I know no better source of the kind of everyday exemption questions that many people have.

Here's the gist of a recent letter. My friend stored belongings in my attic. An unpleasant incident caused a falling out between my former friend and me. Years have passed. Am I entitled to keep the money, if I sell his stuff? Cohen applies his oversized racket: "Alas, his being an unpleasant fellow does not justify your being a thief. Too bad, I admit. We would all feel better if we had to behave honorably only to people we liked."

Now, we can snort at the ease of the question, or sniff at the tone of the reply, but I think there's something to admire here. These letter writers are seeking a second opinion on a moral problem. They're willing to submit their exemption application to a good mind. They're willing to ask, "Will I feel dirty, and will I be dirty, if..." Dishonor gains momentum when we abide by our own first opinion, grant ourselves that convenient exemption, and proceed to the next step--the exemption experiment.

Self-exemptions are a license to experiment, to practice behavior that violates an ethical or a community standard. And this is what Robert Coles did the day his son accidentally gave himself a modest cut with some carpentry tools. Coles tells the following story on himself in his book The Moral Intelligence of Children: "I raced with him to the hospital on a rainy morning, careless that my car was splashing pedestrians crossing the street; at one point I ignored a yellow light, then immediately a red light." Coles is angry and scared. He told his son not to play with the tools. His kid is bleeding. He believes that the situation justifies the violation of traffic laws and safe driving principles. But his son doesn't. The kid says: "Dad, if we're not careful, we'll make more trouble on our way of getting Out of trouble."

Complicity, like an accident, is much easier to understand in retrospect. In cases of dishonor, there are often numerous exemption experiments that good people overlooked or minimized in the hope that worrisome behavior would just stop. And sometimes trouble does blow over. Yet, when self-licensed experiments go unchallenged, they can fuel a numbing cynicism.

Honor is precious property held in common. It is the public recognition of shared and fulfilled aspirations. It can be conferred, withheld, and withdrawn. Individuals win trophies, but no one, unless corruption is total, owns a community's honor. And it is for this reason that dishonor brings communities to grief.

This is why cases of dishonor end with a baffling cycle of emotions: disbelief, hurt, anger, self-blame, and remorse. Communities can't help but ask: What did we miss? What should we have done? Where did we fail? Are there lessons to learn? There is wisdom in these hard questions. There are cautionary stories to learn and tell, and an unspeakable pain to ease.

Law professor Alan Dershowitz would like to abolish the problem of dishonored communities with a wave of his first-amendment wand. His solution to the racist remarks of pitcher John Rocker is to call them bigoted and idiosyncratic, and therefore not a reflection of the culture of major league baseball. Poof--end of problem. Dershowitz concludes: "Such an approach would deny John Rocker or any other player the power to 'dishonor' the game, while allowing major league baseball to honor the spirit of free speech."

What Dershowitz doesn't seem to understand is that the protective flag of the first amendment will not diminish dishonor's power. Too much is at stake. A community is dishonored when its hopes have been misplaced, its trusts deceived, and its values subverted. Asserting that individuals are entitled to their opinions, however true, will not dissolve the hurt of these transgressions.

Dishonor, like any fierce opponent, deserves our respect. It can scuttle youthful talent and promise. It can render years of service null and void. It can cast shadows over distinguished careers, But most importantly, its yellow light offers lessons about circumspect thinking, deliberative consultation and heedful behavior. Dishonor asks us to be mindful of the tension between timeless community ideals and urgent personal desires. And it instructs us that our responses to this tension define who we are as surely as individual awards and collective trophies.

Liberal Education and values

It is hard to imagine a liberal education that did not address the moral trajectory of its students. Take a look, for example, at the Templeton Foundation's recent book, Colleges That Encourage Character Development. It lists 328 colleges or universities that claim to build character through a variety of programs. The book describes institutional strategies to enhance many honorable goals: academic honesty, voluntary service, substance-abuse prevention, student leadership, spiritual growth, and civic education.

As I read about how these programs worked, I concluded that they were morally alert, rigorous, and inspirational. If I had to choose an appropriate undergraduate experience for Alan Dershowitz or John Rocker, these colleges would certainly be on my list.

But none of the descriptions revealed a version of liberal education with a tradition of inquiry into violations of values in a multiplicity of communities. No one suggested that faculty and students were working together, becoming more confident and discerning about how to keep moral reflection alive and well. Nor did they boast that they had nurtured a culture of moral companionship, where it was common for doubtful professors, students, and staff to counsel each other late in the spring term. And so I wonder: How fully does a character develop when its heart and mind are innocent of the crucible of dishonor?

No amount of campus conversation will protect us from the seductions of fame or the shame of infamy. Amulets are not ours to own. What we can own are moments of reckoning about that honor we can pridefully cheer. And what dishonor we must, at times, collectively bear.

JOHN G. RAMSAY is the Hollis Caswell professor of educational studies at Carleton College and president of the faculty. His father is Dr. Jack Ramsay, member of the Basketball Hall of Fame and NBA analyst for ESPN. Revised from an address delivered at Carleton's Honors Convocation, Spring 2000.