February 21, 2003
Of all the stupid...
OK, some girl finished high school in three years, and in those three years amassed the top grades and the most "points" in her class. So school officals apparently said that she could go to college instead of her 12th grade year, and the college courses would count toward her "points" total so she could still be valedictorian.
But then another girl amassed enough points to bump girl #1 out of the top spot. So, since the first girl was already in college, and the second girl is obviously very good at being a high school student, and girl #1 would not benefit at all by being valedictorian, the first girl...
...sued.
There's now an injunction in place to keep the school from naming any valedictorain at all.
Look, I was my class valedictorian. One out of six, actually, since the computer automatically ranks anybody with a 4.0 or higher as #1. You know what being valedictorian got me? Jack shit. Being in the top 10, over even the top 10%, is good enough. No college is going to care if one student got a B one grading period in one class and another got an A -- the difference is just too small to matter.
Besides, these are public schools. You can be in the top half of your class just by finishing four years. (I'm not that far off -- In 1990, I was in a class of 330 or so; at graduation in '94 there were 190 of us left.) Being in the top 40% just means you can read. Why all the fuss over being the cream of the crap?
The first girl did a great job; she finished high school in three years and got accepted to college. She's already on the right track. The other girl spent the standard four years, and was more successful in high school, which is what being the high school valedictorian is all about.
And if I have to explain that to someone, they probably don't deserve to be valedictorian in the first place.
