Selfish, whiny girl sues school to be named sole valedictorian

[Ben Kenobi]

through no fault of your own, your physical disability prevented you from taking the standard physical education course.

Perhaps if her disability could be confirmed, you would have an effective argument.

As is, it's a whole 'nuther ballgame. The punitive suit confirms the attitude of the so-called valedictorian. Again, I am reminded of my High school, in that the valedictorian has to perform a fair amount of volunteer work while maintaining a high GPA. Weeds out the whiners.

[Az]

No I wouldn't have any problem with it. Are co-Valedictorians less respected than sole ones?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Perhaps if her disability could be confirmed, you would have an effective argument.

First, you'll note I was talking about a disabled person in general, in response to Az's general assertion about being valedictorian.

Second, if the school deemed the disability was enough to allow her an exemption from certain courses, such as phys ed, then what we think about it is therefore moot. If they didn't think it was valid, they shouldn't have granted the exemptions. And they certainly shouldn't have, once the exemptions were granted, backpedal come graduation and say her exeptions are going to penalize her status.

The court also seemed to think her disability was valid. Second-guessing it, out of ignorance, isn't really going to get anywhere.

[JCG]

She didn't even know how to plagiarize correctly then...that makes her not just greedy and selfish, but lazy too.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Azazel
No I wouldn't have any problem with it. Are co-Valedictorians less respected than sole ones?

Again, were the situation to smack of being singled out for this kind of treatment due to your disability, I bet your attitude would change. As for being less respected, I covered that when I pointed out that many would think that, were she sharing the stage, that it maybe she didn't really deserve the honor, but was being given it due to her disability. I can't help but think that if a school told me I had to share an honor, whereas others before didn't, because of a physical disability, I'd be pretty peeved, no matter how significant the honor was.

If you're going to have a standard of co-valedictorians, fine. But to suddenly do it when a disabled student is concerned seems unfair to me. If they were going to exempt her from taking courses, then IMO they have to waive those courses when considering the valedictorianism.

[Apocalypse]

What really bothers me, is that it seems she is the one starting all of this ****. Her father seems like an important guy and I doubt he'd really want to do all this on his own. That ***** is probably just whining her ****ing ass off to get her way. I'm still rather pissed of at that damn father though, as he should be able to ****ing stand up to her and stop that ****ty insanity she has started

[mrmitchell]

(1) The girl's disease is bull****
(2) The girl's claim for Valedictorian is bull****
(3) The girl's $2.5mil is bull****
(4) The girl's essays are bull****
(5) This girl is full of bull****.

[Velociryx]

So....tell us how you *really* feel, Mr. Mitchell....

-=Vel=-

[Imran Siddiqui]

Again, were the situation to smack of being singled out for this kind of treatment due to your disability, I bet your attitude would change.

I agree. The main bad spot for the school system was it changed its validictorian preference when it was clear that the disabled woman was going to win. It was really ****ing obvious and pretty dumb. I'm sure she felt that it was just so she wouldn't win (ie, basically a one time deal).

[mrmitchell]

Whut do you mean? If you're asking for my reasons for my opinions, then they're the same reasons that other people in the thread have had, and I felt it unnecessary to repeat them.

As for my last post, that really is whut I think--this girl (and probably her parents) have a mental disease called Being An *******. This is a difficult thing to cope with, I know, and I hope she gets the appropriate medical attention.

[Velociryx]

Just messin' with you, Mr. Mitchell.

And Imran/others: I *would* agree, but....

It does a LOT to destroy her credibility when it comes out later that she blatantly plagarized (and I read the comparisons, you don't get any more blatant than that) not once, not twice, but on three different occassions!

Her excuse? "Oh, what do I know? I'm just a seventeen year old kid."

Yeah. A seventeen year old kid who obviously knew enough to latch on to a potential 2.5 million dollar gravy train when she saw it.

I'm not buying it.

And three separate instances of plagarism outside of school is *more* than an ample trend to make her scholastic achievements suspect as well.

-=Vel=-

[Imran Siddiqui]

It does a LOT to destroy her credibility when it comes out later that she blatantly plagarized

Duh... but not to destroy her credibility that she probably deserved to be sole validictorian. Unless there is proof she did so in school work, it doesn't matter here. It DOES matter for Harvard though.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

It does a LOT to destroy her credibility when it comes out later that she blatantly plagarized

Duh... but not to destroy her credibility that she probably deserved to be sole validictorian. Unless there is proof she did so in school work, it doesn't matter here. It DOES matter for Harvard though.

Absolutely. Her plagiarism and lawsuit is a separate issue from the valedictorian one.

I agree that the girl deserved to be sole valedictorian. That's about all I agree with her on, as I've stated. Her lawsuit is wrong, her plagiarism is wrong, her excuses for it are lame and I sincerely hope Harvard rescinds its acceptance.

[Velociryx]

Hate to break it to "all'ya'll" but *none* of it matters here. I'm seriously doubting that anybody is hanging onto the edge of their seats to find out what we, the folk of 'poly think about the case under discussion.

And from my perspective, the plagarism *does* have weight and bearing on her status as sole valedictorian.

Imagine Imran and Boris going to a track meet and running a race. Imran wins by a shoelace and gets the medal, and a couple months later, it comes out that he gets busted for steroid use.

Of course, he's quick to say that he "wasn't using them when he was running the race," and we're all s'posed to just take him at his word?

Plagarism (especially three separate instances of it) makes ALL her academic achievement suspect.

-=Vel=-

[Boris Godunov]

Unless they can prove the girl plagiarized on her schoolwork, it has NO bearing on her valedictorian standing, case closed. Committing one wrongdoing doesn't not infer the committing of others, thankfully. I'd hate to see the kind of justice system we would have if that were the case!

I would find it very disturbing if a school were to base its awarding of honors on supposition rather than facts. Would you like a court to behave in the same way?