Keith Kretchmer

Your Permanent Record.

As a school aged child these were ominous and dreaded words.  We all knew about our report cards, which were the only parts of our Permanent Record that we could confirm existed.  A copy of my report card from a high school summer school physics class is attached here.  (Note the Hollerith punch card format.  Do not bend, fold, staple or mutilate.)  If you did something wrong, though, seriously wrong, the infraction would also go on Your Permanent Record.

Of course, none of us knew who kept this record, where it was kept, or how it traveled with you as we got older.  We were led to believe, however, that enough infractions on our Permanent Record could ruin our chances for many things we were going to want later in our lives.

But how?  Who decided what was recorded?  Our parents?  Our teachers?  The Principal?  Or, if the infraction involved breaking the law, the Police?

Who had access to consult our Permanent Record?  When?  How?

No child knew.  Nonetheless, all of us knew we had a Permanent Record somewhere.  All of us wanted to keep ours as blemish free as possible.

Perhaps the idea of a Permanent Record was a psychological tool used by school faculty to keep students on the right path.

When I was a college freshman I pledged a fraternity.  In between first and second semesters the pledges went through Hell Week to establish esprit de corps and as a test of sorts prior to becoming a full member of the house.  Part of the activities during the week was preparing for the pledge exam at the end of Hell Week.  We all thought that passing the exam was critical to being allowed to finally join the fraternity.  We worked hard drilling the information into our addled brains.  On the final evening of Hell Week we individually faced an adult alum who administered the oral exam.  It was scored using a complicated and indecipherable system.  After everyone had taken the oral exam we all met in the living room to nervously await the test results.  The moment arrived.  An upper classman looked at all of us in the pledge class, and yelled, “It’s a con!”  What???   Of course we all got in, and were always going to.  We never figured this out ahead of time.

So . . . does each of us have a Permanent Record from our school days?  Or, was it all a con?