The Rules are the Rules …. or, We Mean What We Say and We Say What We Mean 

An exchange student in the Portland metro area was sent home this week – eight months early.

What horrible thing did he or she do, do you ask?  Bring alcohol to school?   Possess marijuana?  Steal the family car?  What could a well-adjusted, smart, 16-year-old exchange student do that would result in being sent home  a scant two months into the high school exchange year?

A much simpler answer, actually…..and yet, so much harder.  The student picked up a $50 item from a display at Nordstrom’s, and walked out without paying for it.  Any of us who are parents can understand the impulsive thought that came into the teen’s mind; many parents have counseled their own teens through similar impulsive, bad decisions.

But for that one impulsive, bad, teen-aged decision, an entire exchange year was lost.  And there was nothing anyone could do.  If an exchange student breaks the law, and is driven home in a police car, that’s the beginning and the end of the story in a nutshell.

Those of us who work with high school foreign exchange students do it because we love the teens.  The hardest cases we deal with are when our students make bad decisions – bad decisions that any teen could make.  But they are exchange students, here on a Dept. of State visa, and subject to higher standards and stricter rules.  Every year, one or more of our teens makes a bad decision.  Every year, for example, there are exchange students who get caught with alcohol – at a party, perhaps, where the police show up.  We warn the students every year before they arrive and after they arrive – and yet, someone, inevitably, does not listen.

All reputable exchange programs have a disciplinary process.  For ordinary and expected behavior issues, the disciplinary process will be progressive – that is, first the local coordinator will give the student a warning; then perhaps the program headquarters will issue a warning; and finally there may be a written and final warning.

But for matters involving the law, there’s not a lot of leeway.   If you break the law, you go home.  Simple…..yes.  But there’s a host family that is already missing a student they loved.    There is a coordinator/supervisor who feels as though she missed something, wishing she could have done …. something.  And there is a young person who has lost the opportunity to spend a year in the United States.

If you are an exchange student, take this message to heart.  If you are hosting an exchange student, show this story to your student.  It’s such a pointless reason to be sent home.