Students propose graduation change

Students+propose+graduation+change

Grace Humphres and

Two seniors are trying to change the way that graduation will look in the future.

Eduardo Gomez and Tiffany Dinh presented a proposal to the Board of Education on September 7 to take away valedictorian and salutatorian titles and replace them with the Latin college honors system. This system would include 3 levels of acknowledgement for graduating seniors; cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude.

“We based our idea on the Latin college honors system which is used by a lot of colleges and universities,” Gomez said.  “We basically want to change the way kids are recognized at graduation.”

This system would recognize a majority of the school, instead of just the top 10 who have traditionally been recognized.

“We feel that not everybody learns the same way and work at the same pace, so it’s not fair to be judged the same way,” Gomez said. “So we want to recognize more people who are also hard workers, who have lower GPAs, but are still getting into college.”

The two also proposed a different method of speeches at graduation.  If there is no more valedictorian or salutatorian, there would be an opening for other students to speak.

“We want to make it a competitive speech.  Anyone who is in one of the 3 groups could try out and the English teachers would judge it,” Dinh said.

The Board is currently discussing whether to change graduation based on this proposal, and the change would not take place until next year at the earliest.