If stopping teen pregnancy were a mission of the school, it would make (a certain kind of) sense to effect any policy that was believed to have the effect of reducing teen pregnancy–such as denying rightfully-earned honors to a student who had a pregnancy. Or expelling her.
This is entirely different from simply covering the subject of teen pregnancy in some class in a fact-based way.
I think it is very wrong. Since when is the quality of “life decisions” made by a particular student–which have very demonstrably not impeded that student’s education–any business of a public school?
The message being sent thereby would seem to be: actual achievements don’t matter as much as the appearance of propriety.
Monstro, I eviscerated your position, and then Miller came along and stomped on its ashes. So, I can understand you deciding not to respond, you have no leg to stand on at this point.
You didn’t even summarize the facts correctly when you quoted them right above your summary. You need to get the facts straight before attempting to make an argument, and you didn’t even do that.
Also, conducting oneself like an adult does not include assuming that anything bad that happens to a black person was due to racism and bristling at any suggestion to the contrary. It’s a big world out there–people do things for lots of reasons. Sometimes a bad thing happens to a black person and would still have happened if that person were not black.
Also, I agree I was being a jerk in that post, and I apologize to the board.
All the more reason to celebrate this girl’s achievements. Not only did she finish school, but she left the rest of her graduating class eating her dust and did it while pregnant/caring for her child. She’s a hero and a goddamn symbol of motherly strength.
What other hardships and extra efforts should be cause for punishment?
The truth is, this young lady endured rigors most people her age cannot handle well at all, and she not only handled them but also handled more of an academic load than most (she was taking honors and advanced classes) and she was handling the higher academic load better than all other kids were handling any academic load at all.
And for that, you think she should be singled out as a failure and punished by not being allowed to be the class valedictorian, in order to send a message to kids to… what? To not get pregnant because achieving can’t be done? Clearly it can. To not get pregnant because society will stomp on you hard, despite all your good attributes? Well, I suppose that message would get across, but to what use?
Again, your argument makes no sense to me.
IMO, she deserves praise for achieving the highest class GPA, regardless of the fact that she was pregnant and gave birth to a child. Her pregnancy has nothing to do with her GPA, except to make it an even more remarkable achievement given the added responsibilities and stress she must have been under.
Bo, Miller is not making that argument. All he is saying is that the fact that the girl had a baby could be the cause of the perceived “big mess”–ie, that could be why they didn’t want to make her the valedictorian.
With that said, the linked story seems a bit garbled. I’ll agree that selecting a “co-valedictorian” seems rather arbitrary, to say the least, but that still means the other person in question is a valedictorian, right?
If a lawsuit is being filed, what are the presumed losses being sued for? I don’t really get it.
Wrong. He is making that argument. I quoted it in the post above, but I’ll quote it again.
And another one:
He’s clearly arguing that in his view, it’s okay for the school to deny her the position of valedictorian because of her pregnancy, in order to send or reinforce a message that has nothing to do with whether or not her GPA was highest among her classmates.
And that argument makes no sense to me, as that denial would only send a message that society will punish young women who get pregnant, despite any redeeming characteristics, even extraordinary ones.
Why would we, as a society, seek to send that message?
If you were on the baseball team that won 4 out of 7 games in the World Series, would you want to be known as co-champions with the team that you outperformed?
I think it’s an attempt to damage her reputation, for one.
If this was all about her being a mom, you’d think they would have just denied her enrollment in AP classes a year ago, when she was actually pregnant. Their reasoning could have been: “It’s for the good of the child”. A young mother can’t handle the responsibilities of AP courses. Sorry, Kimberly." Problem would have been solved then, right?
Gotta love how people are so denial about racism on this board that they glom onto alternative theories–no matter how implausible or how little evidence there is to support them–whenever an apparently galling example of discrimination surfaces. Sure, this could be about a teen having the audacity to succeed in school while being a mother. Why this is supposed to be preferable to racism, is beyond me. But we have no reason to believe this is the case, anway.
Is it that hard to believe that the student and her mother know more about this situation than the skeptics do, and this insight is why they are making the claim that they are? I’m thinking they have had a lot more access to backroom conversations than anyone else. If they had reason to believe this was about her being a mom, a reasonable question is why aren’t they sueing for that? Their justification would be just as strong and they’d probably have a better chance of winning their case in front of a jury that very likely dismisses the notion that overt racism still exists in the year 2011.
Just to be clear, I sympathize completely with the young lady being upset due to the apparent arbitrary selection of a co-valedictorian. I just don’t see a viable lawsuit in it.
Perhaps, but I think it’s going to be difficult to show actual monetary damages. I’ll leave it to a lawyer-poster to comment on whether this is feasible or not.
you with the face, I think most of us just can’t wrap our minds around discrimination this blatant. “There has to be another explanation—even if they thought it, nobody in 2011 would seriously deny a black person an earned honor,” we think.
You might also consider how people are educated about discrimination. As a white person, discrimination was always a very abstract idea, something that happened in the past or the South but not really relevant. Certainly not something I ever looked out for. Black friends have pointed out to me that their experience was different—not only have they experienced discrimination in California, where I was taught that there wasn’t any, they had a large network of informal education in the subject from friends and family.
To take one example, a friend was told not to study German in high school because she was black. I had a similar reaction to the idiocy Rand Rover demonstrates in this thread—I simply couldn’t believe that was racism, but kept grasping at straws to find another explanation. Looking back, it was obviously racism, I just had a strong emotional investment in the belief that my world wasn’t like that.
This sounds like the most likely scenario, and I suspect the school probably figured they’d avoid a big uproar by making them co-vals rather than rescind the title from KymWim.
I’m 99% certain that if this story was about white kid at a majority-black school, there wouldn’t be so many posters being incredulous at the thought that racial politics would be behind making her a co-valendictorian with a lesser qualified black student. Instead of apologetic theories being brought forth about her being a teenage parent, the whole situation would be 1) roundly dismissed as a disgraceful outrage, 2) a sign of the dumbing down of America due to the soft bigotry of low expectations, and 3) proof that anti-white racism is a pervasive threat.
That’s arguably true – but there’s a key difference. It may be legally permissible to treat a minor student differently because she is pregnant, or a mother, where it’s not legally permissible to treat a minor student differently because she is black.