Student sues to be sole valedictorian

Ok, my comments.

Both these girls are coming here next year. Trust me, both these girls will be nagged for their bullsmokey.

I hope that the girl is suing for the reason she claims, that people didnt want to give her full valedic just cause she is disabled. I also hope that these kids bashing her are only doing so because of the media spotlight and jealousy. But I have a feeling that these might be high hopes. My point is...they both got into Harvard, right? So who cares? Trust me, not everyone at Harvard is like that. People like that, annoying overachiever prefrosh who try waaay to hard their first year, they end up having mental breakdowns or suicide attempts, or they get beaten into the system like everyone else.

Also, her getting 20k package is not a big deal, harvard gives out tons of money, because they want the smartest people, and they can afford it (18 billion endowment, they can afford it.)

But I am glad I wont have to deal with these girls next year....
 
Originally posted by herr_neumann
Oviously no one here knows anyone with a disability or about discrimination.
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i knew kids in high school with cysitic fibrosis that would suck it up and go to gym class. they have low impact PE for special needs kids, (in other words, i do know people with disabilities. they'd more likely be pissed at her for milking the system, then suing it when it didn't work out for her)

the kids comments are most likely out of jealousy. take them as you will. oh, and one more thing: she didn't have the stamina to handle a high school course load? HTF is she going to handle harvard?
 
This exactly reason that my HS quit awarding an actual Valedictorian. The school I teach in now does not award this either. In fact, most schools in my state have stopped this practice. There was a case back in the 80's in my hometown where a kid got beat-up and put in the hospital because he beat someone else for the honor. The Board of Education got rid of it shortly after that. We still award honors based on GPA, but we do not know who is Number 1. I think it works better, since no one really cared and cut throats. The idea is not to compete with your peers, but to compete with yourself to do the best you can do.

Does the honor really matter? I don't know one of the girls that I knew graduated in the top of my class She was a straight A student and she failed out of college. She is 26 andliving at home now working a min. wage job. I graduated 19 out of 25 in a small high school. I graduated from college with honors and my working at my career.
 
This girl goes to school in the town next to mine. It has been the talk of the county (Burlington County NJ) for the past week. I have competed against her in Mock Trial competitions, her team winning every year because he father is a Camden County Superior Court Judge. She never seemed to have a dissibility to me when she competed in the courtroom only a bit too rehearsed. Rumors about her have spread like wildfire to my town (right next to eachother and "rivals"). It appears she won't be attending graduation, but will be at her villa in Italy. If she was to attend, however, studetns planed on protesting her speach by turning their backs reading newspapers and such. Quite a sad story, I truly hope it is her parents and not her.

Greg
 
Originally posted by herr_neumann
You guys are missing the point. The school was saying she got an advantage because she was given accommodations for her disability. Accommodations are given to even things out, not to give an advantage. She was right to sue, the school had the head up their *ss. Obviously no one here knows anyone with a disability or about discrimination.
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Take a closer look at what happened, she was in fact given an advantage by not being required to attend gym. Because of her school's weighted GPA policy the effect of her not being required to complete gym in accordance with county school guidelines set up a situation where she was able to achieve a higher GPA then the highest possible GPA available to her fellow classmates.

It would have been easy for the school to enforce a policy where students unable to attend gym for whatever reason are required to take some other personal enrichment non-academic class in its place. It seems wildly unfair to her colleagues that she, for whatever reason, was able to exempt herself from gym and use that time in a way that the rest of the student body was precluded from.

What your saying is that instead of using disability law to even an otherwise uneven playing field we should use the law to weight situations in favor of whomever we deem to be the most needy.
 
Her quest to be the sole valedictorian seems a bit petty, yes. But I also wonder about all the indignation shown on this thread. This is some small town girl in highschool where none of us live. What is the point of this virtue? America now seems to revel in it. What is the point of all these manufactured courtroom dramas? unified in our affront. Does it really make us better people to stand in righteous judgement over the fly?
 
What's a valedictorian? Like that 'hazing' thing last week I'm sure the school system in the US uses a different language to everywhere else ;)

Is a valedictorian some sort of best in year award? If it is it does seem really petty and unimportant. I've got a PhD and a degree and people really don't give a damn what I did in school. As it was I just did enough to see myself through to the next stage. What's the point of knocking yourself out when the end result is much the same in the long run?
 
I seem to remember reading an article a while ago where a diabled student sued to get more time on a standardized test, and didn't want the achievement to be marked with an asterisk. While I totally agree with accomodating as much as possible those with disabilities, the result of this kind of decision where the scores are reported as equal even though they were earned with varying levels of difficulty is that unscrupulous people (usually pushy parents IMHO) will see it as OK to get their kids (and only their kids) into these kinds of special situations where they don't deserve it. The problem is generally not with the people with actual (and truly debilitating to some extent) disability. It is with those who would take advantage of the system to further their own selfish, petty goals. Same goes with ADA, I'm definetly glad we take the accomodation of the disabled into consideration now, but those who abuse it with frivilous claims, or ridiculous requests defy the spirit of the act. Perhaps this girl is disabled, but it seems like she has it better than a lot of other disabled people who do need more assistance. I think the real problem is that there is no way of catagorizing how much "accomodation" a person needs. For example, I had 2 friends in my college classes, both considered "disabled" by the college. One was a quadraplegic, the other had diabetes. Both were treated as equally "disabled" even though the one with diabetes was perfectly normal except for having to test himself and administer shots of insulin occasionally during class. Both were treated the same by the school in terms of available services, early class enrollment etc.
OK end of rant, but once again (as in so many areas of life) a few people will ruin something for the rest of us.
 
Originally posted by Stelliform
A valedictorian is usually a person who has the highest grades in the graduation class. Apparently many schools handle the process differently. In my highschool we had as many valedictorians as we needed. So if we had 3 perfect scores we had 3 valedictorians. They would pick only one to give a speach at graduation. Usually the one who was most involved.

Apparently at this girl's school there is usually only one. Her brother was valedictorian, so I have a feeling alot of this is to make sure that she is just like her brother.
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This reminds me of a conversation I had in my first week of college during orientation. This guy from Tanzania also didn't know what valectorian meant so he asked me. I explained to him that it was given to the person with the highest grade average. So he was like: "Oh, I was valedictorian!". And I was like, oh, that's great, you were valedictorian of your school. And he was like: "No, I'm valedictorian of Tanzania".

Apparently, Tanzania has a national public education system with a uniform curriculum, so they're actually able to rank students nationally. Pretty wild meeting the valedictorian of a freakin' country! :eek:
 
Originally posted by lmalave
This reminds me of a conversation I had in my first week of college during orientation. This guy from Tanzania also didn't know what valectorian meant so he asked me. I explained to him that it was given to the person with the highest grade average. So he was like: "Oh, I was valedictorian!". And I was like, oh, that's great, you were valedictorian of your school. And he was like: "No, I'm valedictorian of Tanzania".

Apparently, Tanzania has a national public education system with a uniform curriculum, so they're actually able to rank students nationally. Pretty wild meeting the valedictorian of a freakin' country! :eek:
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that's awsome! it would be an honor to be valedictorian of one school, but country is very impressive!
 
All arguments about fairness and discrimination aren't really the same in this case. It almost makes me laugh reading the article, saying she was discriminated against. What bothers me is that this girl is not trying to even out the score and bring herself up...she's trying to push somebody down. Other articles have referenced other graduation law suits, but the diference is that those suits involve somebody fighting to become valedictorians themselves, not take the title away from somebody else. She still is receiving the title of valedictorian, but to sue for being the SOLE valedictorian is rediculous and it just shows how greedy and selfish she is. The only argument really valid for me is the one that there should only be one valedictorian. This isn't right because being valedictorian isn't a contest, it's an honor and an award. Certainly, more than one person can be valedictorian without it being any less of an honor. If I was valedictorian when I graduated (I was pretty close too by the way), I would not be bothered at all by having other people share the honor with me, no matter what tiny GPA differences (wasn't it like a .005 difference?) there were.
 
Originally posted by paulwhannel
the answer to this discrimination thing is simple... do away with PE class :D

pnw
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Paul, I hope you meant that as a joke considering how many children are inactive and overweight these days.
 
Originally posted by Abercrombieboy
Paul, I hope you meant that as a joke considering how many children are inactive and overweight these days.
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i don't mean for this to be taken offensively, but almost all of the overweight kids in my school just stand there and let all of the preppy athletic kids do all of the work. they talk to each other about anime and video games. doing away with PE i think would be good, or at least cut down on it. bad part about me saying this is by the time any kind of new PE thing would be put in place, i would be out of college!
 
My PE classes were always a good mix of team-based and individual subjects, which prevented most people from "coasting" through on other people's abilities.

I definitely don't think PE classes should be eliminated -- quite a lot of students (such as myself) benefit greatly from the exercise we would otherwise ignore. My general state of health dropped considerably once I left high school and PE classes behind.

Regarding the topic of this thread, I think that some sort of low-impact activities should have been devised to work around her disability and allow her to take the PE class.
 
Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
i don't mean for this to be taken offensively, but almost all of the overweight kids in my school just stand there and let all of the preppy athletic kids do all of the work. they talk to each other about anime and video games. doing away with PE i think would be good, or at least cut down on it. bad part about me saying this is by the time any kind of new PE thing would be put in place, i would be out of college!
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Ha, even my college had PE requirements. I went to a tech school...gotta whip those sorry-ass nerds into shape :D
 
Ha, even my college had PE requirements. I went to a tech school...gotta whip those sorry-ass nerds into shape
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i hear that. I go to brandeis and we have to complete two semesters of PE to graduate. Granted, it can be filled with something like CPR or power walking, but it has to be health and fitness oriented. whats really funny is that the people who donated our swimming pool had attached a rider that forced students to successfully pass a swim test in order to graduate. luckily we managed to override that my freshman year...not that i dont know how to swim, just that it seemed rather odd that my BA rode on being able to tread water for 2 minutes. Maybe they were trying to teach us real life experience....

anyhow, on topic again, i feel like this entire situation is odd. regardless of weighted/unweighted GPAs, it just seems odd that she would be suing to be sole valedictorian. all the other facts, vis a vis her weighted/unweighted gpa and whether she had special help in her classes, only seem to be important as background to her story...and if anything only make more of a case for co-valedictorianship. think about it: her grades reflect tutoring and not being forced to take gym. so, shes been reasonably accommodated (assuming that her claims/sickness is true-not getting into that debate). the co-valedictorian has had a "normal" experience and her gpa reflects one representative of the avg student excelling. assuming the first student was reasonably accommodated by the actions taken, she was therefore given a nearly equivalent high school experience. ergo, there is no real discrimination, as she, by being given a reasonable accommodation, has essentially been brought level with her peers. and if she, on a peer to peer level, ties with one, then she ties. end of story. or at least thats how i read it.
(if this got too mucked up in its construction, as i often get, i am sorry)
--carly
 
Originally posted by bennetsaysargh
what kind of requirements were those?
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Had to take 4 PE classes. There was a wide variety of PE classes offered, though. Also, each semester of playing a varsity sport counted as 2 PE classes. There was also a swimming requirement. And a writing requirement. And everyone had to take 8 humanities classes, minimum. They were very big into making sure we were well-rounded nerds.
 
Originally posted by lmalave
Had to take 4 PE classes. There was a wide variety of PE classes offered, though. Also, each semester of playing a varsity sport counted as 2 PE classes. There was also a swimming requirement. And a writing requirement. And everyone had to take 8 humanities classes, minimum. They were very big into making sure we were well-rounded nerds.
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at least they were well-rounded nerds! and could run to the apple store:D:p
 
Originally posted by Stelliform
It is interesting to watch unfold. I am dying to see what happens at graduation. I doubt Harvard will rescend its offer to her. Because we know she will sue. :)

BTW Congrats on your 500 bennetsaysargh. :)
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thanks!:D my little brother (10 years old) is so excited. i don't know why.

i am also looking forward to se what happens in this story. funny conversation in the always off topic math class. we could make it a math problem! another day wasted in math!:D:D
 
disabled brat sues to be "biggest" brat. that should be the headline. No offense to any whom this may apply to, but honestly, if you need the selfsatistfaction of being a valedictorian of your high school, a fact that will help you in no way during your normal life, then you have an extremely low self esteem.
 
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