Is it ever appropriate, or effective, for a third party to apologize to the victim? If the goal of an apology is to make amends to the victim, and to restore the offender to the victim\u2019s good graces, it seems like a third party\u2019s apology would be meaningless. <\/p>\n
But there is a place for it, when the third party has influence over the offender. If my neighbor apologizes to me because his three-year-old picked my tulips, I can hope that the parent is also going to deal with the child so this doesn\u2019t happen again. So the parent\u2019s apology would help mollify me. When my three-year-old neighbor actually did pick my tulips, the parent brought the child to the door and had the child apologize to me; that was effective (and pretty cute).<\/p>\n
A couple weekends ago, members of sororities and fraternities from the University of Michigan rented rooms at two ski resorts up north and did a lot of damage<\/a> while there. This week, student leaders from U of M issued a joint apology<\/a>. These student leaders don\u2019t indicate that they know the offenders, so in that sense, the apology falls short: an apology from a third-party stranger doesn\u2019t do much good.<\/p>\n These leaders \u2013 the president of the student body, president of the intrafraternity council, and president of the pan-hellenic association — state that they intend to \u201chandle the situation\u201d and \u201censure that those responsible for the damage to the properties are held accountable.\u201d They thus imply that they have some power over the offenders. Like an apology from a parent for a child\u2019s misbehavior, this assertion might help: at least the offenders won\u2019t totally get away with it.<\/p>\n The student leaders\u2019 apology appears somewhat self-serving; they seem to be distancing themselves from the offenders, by cautioning against judging all fraternities and sororities, or all U of M students, or all college students, based on what they call the \u201cmisbehavior of a few individuals.\u201d It\u2019s a valid point, but it undercuts the sincerity of the apology.<\/p>\n Calling this \u201cmisbehavior\u201d instead of vandalism minimizes the impact on the victims\u2014not what you want to do if you\u2019re sincerely trying to apologize. Suggesting the damage was done by \u201ca few individuals\u201d seems a bit disingenuous\u2014the students rented 40 rooms at one resort, and 12 condos at another, with damage estimates totaling $75,000 for the two resorts, so there may be dozens of students involved here; the spokesperson for Boyne Highlands called it \u201cthe worst bout of vandalism from a student group the resort has ever experienced.\u201d An apology that minimizes the impact on the victim can actually make things worse. <\/p>\n The student leaders\u2019 statement seems to be aimed at an audience other than the direct victims of the weekend vandalism. As a public statement, it\u2019s well-crafted, but as a genuine apology, it falls short. This illustrates how complicated apologies can be, especially when they\u2019re public, and when they\u2019re made by third parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it ever appropriate, or effective, for a third party to apologize to the victim? If the goal of an apology is to make amends to the victim, and to restore the offender to the victim\u2019s good graces, it seems like a third party\u2019s apology would be meaningless. But there is a place for it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":289,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}