Where a Man Stands by Carter Paysinger & Steven Fenton

Author:Carter Paysinger & Steven Fenton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

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ONCE THE RENAMED DIVERSITY PERMIT program kicked off, one of the first beneficiaries was my brother Donald’s son, Justin Paysinger. Justin filled out his application and waited to hear back from the admissions officer, though his acceptance was basically a formality because of my family’s ties to the school. When I got in, it pretty much opened the doors for my brothers and now their children.

Sure enough, Justin was accepted.

Not much later, though, I got a visit from Chuck Kloes, now an administrator at the school. As soon as he walked into my office I could tell Chuck was upset.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just got kicked off the Diversity Permit committee,” he said.

Chuck sat down and explained what had happened. One of the stipulations of the permit program is that a candidate’s application must be “complete.” It turns out Justin’s application had been missing one page—the sheet that verified his address and personal information. It was probably the most standard part of the application and not something anyone would ever leave out on purpose. But for whatever reason, that page was missing from Justin’s application.

When Chuck noticed it wasn’t there, he called Justin’s mother and asked her about it. By then Chuck was like a member of our family, and he didn’t think twice about helping my nephew sort out the situation. Justin’s mother swore she remembered putting the sheet in, but in any case she ran a copy over to Beverly that afternoon.

The next day, an official from the Beverly Hills district called Chuck into his office. He scolded him for even considering Justin’s application since technically it wasn’t complete.

“We don’t even know who lost the sheet,” Chuck argued. “It might have been someone in our office.”

But the official wasn’t having it and kicked Chuck off the committee.

“He told me I have no integrity, and I’m a low-character guy,” Chuck said. “He said he didn’t want me in his district at all.”

I was horrified. I couldn’t believe my friend and mentor was having his integrity questioned over an issue that involved my nephew—and a seemingly inconsequential issue at that. Should Justin’s application really have been tossed because one page was missing? Should a kid’s future really hinge on a little slipup that might not have even been his slipup?

I could see the pain and weariness on Chuck’s face as he sat slumped in my office. His reputation at Beverly was spotless, or at least it had been. Now he’d been saddled with a humiliating disciplinary action.

That very spring, Chuck announced his resignation.

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