Modern-Day Scarlet Letter

I think that an example of a modern-day scarlet letter here at Punahou would be people who get expelled and who come back the next year. Everyone knows that they were expelled and some version of why, and people always remember. It's not that everyone else thinks badly of them or anything, but it's always the first thing they think of. Whenever someone hasn't heard of what happened, someone else is always like, "Oh, that's so-and-so, he got kicked out for..." It's like Hester's A because it's a reminder of something they did wrong that people fixate on. Sometimes they can turn it around like Hester did, when people started saying A was for "able." People might say, "They got kicked out for failing, but now they're doing really well in their classes," or something.