My Spokesman-Review colleague Dan Webster once spent a semester at the Gonzaga-in-Florence program because his wife was teaching there. I asked him how he got along with the students. He told me just fine, because he kept in mind one thing: The students were half-formed human beings.

A week ago, when the troubles broke for Gonzaga University basketball teammates Josh Heytvelt and Theo Davis, every adult I spoke with above the age of 30 wondered: What were they thinking? Coach Mark Few expressed it best. What in the heck were you doing out late at night in a bad place the night before a game?

The shorthand answer: The two young men, like the majority of college-age people, are half-formed human beings.

Science backs this up. The prefrontal cortex of the brain – termed the “area of sober second thought” – allows human beings to weigh consequences and assume responsibility. But as writer Judith W. Herrman explained in a recent issue of Pediatric Nursing, the prefrontal cortex “is the last area of the brain to mature.” It doesn’t finish developing until people are well into their 20s.

I’m not downplaying the seriousness of the players’ drug-possession arrests. Nor the public embarrassment and humiliation. Nor the consequences of their actions.

But we aging boomers who wonder what they were thinking must be forgetting the stupid things some of us did in our late teens and early 20s. Perhaps we participated in drinking contests, or smoked too much, or dabbled in drugs, or drove drunk or stoned, or stayed up all night partying. At my Gonzaga-in-Florence reunions, we retell the story of the student who got so drunk at Oktoberfest in Munich that he passed out. His friends delivered him to our tour bus on a hotel luggage cart.

We aging boomers have forgotten because our lives are different now. We debate the wisdom of having that second glass of wine. We go to bed at 10 p.m., hit the treadmill at 6 a.m. and complain to the front desk if we smell a hint of cigarettes in our nonsmoking hotel rooms.

I kept journals throughout my college years and into my early 20s; it’s a cringefest whenever I reread them. But the journals allow me to remember. I tell the young people in my life that the ages of 18 to 23 are like the Genesis Planet, featured in a 1980s “Star Trek” movie. The dead planet comes back to life by artificial means. It is stunningly beautiful but highly unstable. An earthquake rattles the planet. Then, just as things calm down, a volcano erupts.

One of my nephews recently got off the Genesis Planet. He’s in his later 20s, and his prefrontal cortex seems fully operational. He has a responsibility-filled job, and he and his wife just bought their first home. When I told him the theme of this column, he said, “If you could follow around kids in their early 20s on a Saturday night, I bet 50 percent of them would be doing stuff that would get them arrested.”

The best thing about screwing up in your early 20s is that you often get a second chance. Some don’t, however. Some die from driving drunk or stoned. And some don’t take those second chances. Their drug dabbling becomes a habit and a curse, and the damage shows in their faces, bodies and brains as they age. The prefrontal cortex has a more difficult time developing when you’re addicted to alcohol or drugs, and that’s probably one reason some people in their 40s, 50s, 60s remain half-formed human beings.

Both of the in-trouble Zags might lose their basketball careers. In their 50s, it won’t matter much. What will matter is how they weave the lessons from this very public mistake into the larger narrative of their lives. I’m hoping for the best for these young men and for all the people I care about who dwell now on the Genesis Planet, named in honor of new beginnings.