I owe you all an apology...

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

... for my tone yesterday. There's a certain amount of irony - or should that be hypocrisy? - in me snapping like that over the journals, given what I'd just been telling the kids. I'm going to do my best to follow my own advice, and hope that you'll forgive me the lapse.

Part of the problem would have been avoided had I made some kind of public statement as to how I did handle things, rather than just informing Charles. I'll try to remember in future that the kids aren't the only ones who need to see that something's been done.

That said, I still believe chastising anyone involved in the argument was not appropriate at the time and would have worsened the situation. Charles is of course addressing Manuel's behavior with him; setting the kids aside for a moment, we should know that. Unless anyone else honestly believes they can successfully give Manuel de la Rocha a lecture on psionic ethics - I think I can hear Nathan laughing hysterically from Italy - I think we should leave it to the Professor.

As to whether we should have been seen to disapprove... maybe. I still think that's debatable. Manuel has misused his powers in the past. The kids know that. Most of them, at least, also know what the consequences of that were for him. I'd like to think that the lack of panic in the halls is due to them not believing he was serious and trusting us to handle it if he was.

As for the students not respecting us... I think this has come up before, hasn't it? We can't demand their respect. We can demand civility, but really, I wasn't actually seeing a lack of that directed at us yesterday. At fellow students, yes, but it's a lot more productive to address the circumstances that lead to the snarling, rather than just attack the symptom of the problem.

Finally, there's one other point I made yesterday that I don't regret making at all, even if I should have done it more temperately. Whether I should have done something differently, or communicated what I was doing more effectively, the fact is that you all left me to do it. No one, with the exception of Jean, jumped in at the time to do anything, and to be perfectly honest, folks, then is when something needed to be done. Not after the fact.

You can criticize how I handled it, and I will do my best to handle that criticism better than the kids, but you need to stop leaving me to hold the bag.