Chapter 1: No More Program: College Begins

The first few days following graduation passed very quickly. There were a few final minor things to do at the school, like cleaning out lockers, turning in their last books, and bidding farewell to their coaches. However, one of the more essential parts of graduating was getting their final transcripts to be sent to their college. But as the now ungraduated graduates found, getting their final transcripts was being blocked by the school, as Davis had warned he would do. There even was a sign posted outside the office that read, “Students who refused Program participation will not receive a transcript.”

The Marine JA office was ready to move on this problem, and during the week following the graduation ceremonies, the JA office requested a meeting between the school district’s officials and a group of Marine parents; many of the parents of the high-school students who were being denied transcripts were members of the senior officer and NCO ranks and they attended in semi-dress uniform. At the meeting, Capt Donelley, the assistant judge advocate representing the Marine families, presented his arguments.

“This is the situation, for you ladies and gentlemen representing the school district. Under the state education law, any student who has met the academic requirements established by law for graduation, and who has not been expelled from school for cause, is automatically entitled to graduate on completing the required credits and achieving the required minimum grade-point average. That’s point one.

“Next, state education law does not recognize any federal requirement or prerequisite involving any academic or non-academic activity that can affect a student’s right to become a high school graduate. Third, any graduation requirement imposed on any student cannot be applied selectively to one group of students and exclude other students. If a graduation requirement exists, it must apply to all students equally, not to a randomly chosen subset of students. Your school is failing to observe those three legal requirements.

“It’s possible that the consequences of not receiving an official statement of their graduation may not have any effect on some of our students, but it obviously greatly affects those students who need documentation of graduation for college admission as well as for other purposes. It’s also very possible that some consequences of your withholding official transcripts could be economic in nature. This means that by withholding them, the district is creating an injury to these students, and the district is violating state law by not fulfilling the school’s duty to provide an education to these students by withholding the evidence that this education was received. Part of providing that education is the formal acknowledgment that the student successfully completed the education. And because the parents of virtually every student affected will be moving out of the state within a year or two as the service member is reassigned, it would make future resolution so much more difficult without incurring great expense.

“The next step that my office will take on behalf of these parents seated here, who represent all of our clients, will be to obtain a court injunction to compel the district to issue official transcripts to each student that clearly shows that, in every case, they have met their requirements for graduation. We will also explore the possibility of seeking damages, compensatory definitely, and punitive if possible. I’ve approached you in this informal manner so that you may avoid the costs, time, and bad publicity of an injunction and the large number of lawsuits we would file. Some two hundred fifty plus, I believe.”

The school’s attorney responded that the matter wasn’t under the school’s control as the federal Program office required the school to withhold graduation from students who failed to participate.

“That requirement, sir, is neither under the authority of that federal office—Social Awareness, I believe, nor does any such requirement exist in the enabling legislation that established that federal office. It’s an operational policy of that office to require schools to use the threat of non-graduation in an attempt to compel student participation, but in this state, at least, the state’s education laws take precedence over any procedure that the federal government might attempt to impose. If you had consulted the federal law itself instead of going solely by the Program’s policy guidebook, you would have seen that there is no provision in it that mandates that graduation is to be withheld for non-participation. That requirement is simply a policy of the Office of Social Awareness and is rendered void by this state’s laws. And consider that we would seek our injunction and sue in a state court, since it is state law that the school district has violated.”

There were a few more objections raised by the school’s officials but all were easily dismissed, and then Capt Donelley finished his statement.

“We will give you one week to issue the students’ official transcripts. We aren’t asking for their diploma certificates. You could interpret that the Program rule about not graduating means that it applies to the withholding of the students’ diplomas, although if you choose to provide those, I’m sure that my clients will be pleased to receive them. If these families do not receive the certified transcripts, properly annotated that all requirements for graduation have been met, we will move on to the next step: court proceedings. Consider the costs of having to respond to over 250 lawsuits.”

After the twins’ high school alternate graduation, the Denison family turned their attention to their upcoming moves—the adults to Denison’s next post at Camp Lejeune Marine base and the teens to their college. About ten days after their alternate graduation ceremony, the mail brought certified copies of the twins’ transcripts. Everyone was amused to see that they were stamped, “Met all state graduation requirements; no diploma issued.”

“Look, they had to have a special stamp made for that,” Denison snorted when he read it.

A few days before the end of June, Tom and Mitchell, his step-father, together with Roger, flew to Atlanta to look at some prospective rentals near their campuses. Roger’s dad would be leaving himself in two days to report to his new assignment, so Roger’s family got together with Tom’s for a farewell dinner several evenings before their departures. Finding a suitable apartment with two bedrooms and a usable kitchen proved to be more difficult than they had anticipated, however, but after three days of looking at prospective apartments, they found a very tiny one, about 600 square feet, within two miles of both campuses. It was clean, had limited furnishings, but was very cramped. After consulting with Cynthia and Ayame, and showing the place to them by video, they agreed to lease it. As Mitchell had predicted, their housing costs would be significantly lower than if they had used university housing.

Once the arrangements were finalized, the three returned to California and Roger pitched in with his sister and Ayame to pack the family’s house. It was a complicated job; there were three separate destinations for their household goods. Stuart’s and Sarah’s possessions comprised the largest amount. The twins’ furniture and other possessions that they didn’t need in college would go to storage near their parents’ new home, and the things that they would take with them to college was in the third group. Sarah, a veteran of many prior moves, organized the packing like a master.

The teens were undecided about how they would travel to Atlanta. Roger and Cynthia shared a car and Sarah didn’t want to house a third car at her new home; Tom had a car himself and wanted to have it in Atlanta. They discussed driving in two cars, but then decided to ship one car and the four would drive there in Tom’s, which was larger and newer. Then came moving day and the day of parting; Sarah was to fly out to North Carolina, shipping her own car, and the four teens left on their cross-country drive.

Their trip from southern California to Atlanta was uneventful; the teens took their time and even visited a few touristy sights during their trip east. Keeping in touch with their parents was simple too, and soon the twins were even able to have video chats with the Denisons in their new base housing. They made tentative plans to visit Camp Lejeune during their first holiday break, provided any sports competition conflicts didn’t occur to interfere with the plans.

Because of their scholarships, Roger and Cynthia had to arrive ten days before regular freshman registration for pre-season orientation, training, and making up their class schedules so that competition, practices, and training sessions would not interfere with academics. Since Tom and Ayame didn’t have anything official to do during those ten days, they got elected to unpack, set up the apartment, run various errands, and retrieve the twins’ car from the transport company.

Tom was in the industrial and facilities engineering program at Georgia Polytech and Ayame was in the pre-med program at Avery; the two schools were a little over five miles apart. Cynthia was considering a degree in education but was also interested in educational psychology, while Roger wanted to work with young people as a psychologist. From their apartment, it was an easy bike ride to either campus and convenient public transportation was also available so they wouldn’t need their cars for daily travel to campus. Class registration came, classes began, and soon they settled into a routine.

Since the twins had advanced class standing, they were entering their freshman year with a class standing between upper freshman and sophomore levels, so they were permitted to take several education prerequisite classes including a class called “Introduction to Principles of Education.” The course’s focus, according to the syllabus the twins had read, was to explore issues in schools and education through both student-centered classroom activities and by observing each of a series of elementary school classes, middle school classes, and a high-school humanities class and a science class. They were to write reports on their observations and in student-led discussions, they were to develop ideas for designing and implementing curriculum for the classes they observed, considering how those classes met standards of education, used methods of instruction, taught using different media, and assessed student progress, all based on their classroom observations. The university had a lab school, plus had access to two charter schools and two public high schools where the observations would take place.

After the first few sessions of that class, Roger was talking to Cynthia about it.

“Man, this is really advanced for an introductory class,” he remarked. “There’s stuff there that the prof will have to cover—like he speaks about ‘standards of education’ as if we know what that means.”

“Yeah,” Cynthia responded. “He did say that he expected us to work out what we thought the standards should be as we do our observations and discussions. We’re supposed to be analytical and develop a framework on which to base standards. I guess that’s why this class is a ‘gateway’ class; it’s supposed to see if the students are equipped to go on to the more difficult classes in ed.”

“We’ve gotta get used to learning in a whole different way,” he sighed. “No more learning only out of books, yeah, that’s what we were told, but facing it now is a real experience. Say, looks like our sports seasons almost overlap. We start training for real next week and competition finals are at the end of March; your basketball is the same.”

“Yeah, it’ll be hard to go to each other’s games and meets,” she agreed. “Well, at least the schedules don’t interfere with classes too badly. And another responsibility is that we’re supposed to mentor a high school team as an assistant coach, but that comes next year—as a second year on the team, fortunately.”

“Oh yeah, the men’s team does the same thing. We’re supposed to coach swimming starting next year too. That’ll be cool.”

The following Tuesday, Cynthia got home after a day that involved her observation of her assigned high-school class.

“Hi guys, guess what? I had my first observation in class today for our Intro to Ed class, and they’re running the damn Program in the high school. Bunches of naked kids in class, sex in the halls, masturbating in class—you know, Relief, all that shit,” she moaned. “I thought I was done with that crap.”

She put her head in her hands.

“Goddamn,” Roger sighed. “Yeah, so how can we develop any meaningful educational standards with that garbage interfering with the kids in the school, anyway? We stopped that stuff from happening in our high school, but it’s gotta affect how the kids learn.”

“Well, it sure as hell had an effect in the class I observed. I’m assigned to observe a science class, it’s sophomore biology, and it was sex—pure sex. Today the boy and girl—such young kids—had to demonstrate sexual response and they were made to stimulate each other until they came. They were scared, reluctant as hell, and totally embarrassed. I couldn’t watch; I had to leave the room. It wasn’t that they were doing anything physically harmful—I would have stopped them if I saw that—it was just awfully humiliating for them. That poor girl was crying. I had to speak to the teacher afterwards as part of my observation and I told him that I thought that doing that was totally obscene and perverted. He was surprised and asked me if I wasn’t aware of the Program and how teachers have to use the naked kids as teaching props.