Selfish, whiny girl sues school to be named sole valedictorian

[Mordoch]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
so she sued and won. it was a pyrrhic victory, though, and i don't pity her. she was named valedictorian, she got that. but she wasn't able to go to the only place where being valedictorian mattered; she's become a pariah in her hometown; she's lost her harvard seat; she's become despised by a huge number of people. but she's valedictorian, and 2.7 million richer. i wonder if she thinks it was worth it.

Actually she HASN'T won the portion of her lawsuit where she asked for money. She may need to now that she probably can't go to a decent college period. She undoubtedly already turned down the other schools besides Harvard that let her in, and no prominent school is going to let her in given the very prominent plagerism on her record. (The massive anger directed against her will also deter schools from taking her.) There is probably some community college that will accept her and look past the plagerism issue, but she may have gained her valedictorian status but ruined her life.

[Q Classic]

a pyrrhic victory. she's valedictorian.

[Kirnwaffen]

A bit late to comment, but here's my $.02 anyway:

As far as the 'GPA race' goes, the girl had an unfair advantage. That really isn't disputable. That said, she also 'won' under the then-current rules. It is understandable to see why someone might be upset when those rules are changed mid-course.

Under the circumstances, however, I don't think that you can really call this discrimination. What we have here is a system that has been exposed to an unforseen circumstance. The rules were simply adapted to that circumstance in order to produce maximum fairness. There was no intent to discriminate, and her accomplishments were in no way devalued through the policy change.

To say that her illness is bogus goes too far. While, at least in my mind, her apparently prolific community service and her intent to go to Harvard call this claim into question, I would hardly say that I, or anyone else here (one notable exception), is qualified to say that she has no disability.

To use the judge's ruling on the issue to argue for her side demonstrates unwarranted faith in our legal system. There have been questionable rulings offered by judges at all levels of the judiciary. This might be one of them.

As for the apparent vitriol here, I think that is easily explainable, considering that she is asking the school for ANY damages that are not strictly economic, let alone 2.5 million punitive. That is simply ridiculous.

[Drake Tungsten]

The ***** didn't get into Harvard? Excellent!

God Bless America!

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
I seriously considered skipping my graduation.

I skipped mine. My dad showed up there without getting in touch with me first (he lived far away, and we hadn't seen one another in several years). He wasn't too happy about it. My mom was also living out of state, so there wasn't any reason for me to go.

[Skanky Burns]

I also skipped mine. I think I was doing something much more fulfilling with my time, such as posting here.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Kirnwaffen
A bit late to comment, but here's my $.02 anyway:

As far as the 'GPA race' goes, the girl had an unfair advantage. That really isn't disputable. That said, she also 'won' under the then-current rules. It is understandable to see why someone might be upset when those rules are changed mid-course.

Under the circumstances, however, I don't think that you can really call this discrimination. What we have here is a system that has been exposed to an unforseen circumstance. The rules were simply adapted to that circumstance in order to produce maximum fairness. There was no intent to discriminate, and her accomplishments were in no way devalued through the policy change.

To say that her illness is bogus goes too far. While, at least in my mind, her apparently prolific community service and her intent to go to Harvard call this claim into question, I would hardly say that I, or anyone else here (one notable exception), is qualified to say that she has no disability.

To use the judge's ruling on the issue to argue for her side demonstrates unwarranted faith in our legal system. There have been questionable rulings offered by judges at all levels of the judiciary. This might be one of them.

As for the apparent vitriol here, I think that is easily explainable, considering that she is asking the school for ANY damages that are not strictly economic, let alone 2.5 million punitive. That is simply ridiculous.

A very balanced post. I'd like to add just one thing to the discussion, which is this: I bet one reason why the school decided to change the rules (which were unfair to others btw) is that Blair had probably been a major pain in the a$$ for years. Most valedictorion wannabes are, and she seems particularly gifted in this regard. If she had been gracious enough to admit that the rules gave her an advantage, and that changing them would in no way disadvantage her (ie now there would be two Val.), she would have sailed on without a hitch. Now she has to become a crack whore / go to a state school. Haha!

[Az]

I liked my graduation. I hosted the ceremony.

[Velociryx]

Sorry Imran and GePap, I still disagree. And having read some of the other posts that followed yours, it seems I'm not alone in that disagreement.

The only possible fault the school had in the whole mess was in trying to remedy an unfair situation in mid stream. Yes, it would have been better to wait till the end of the year to implement a change. It also would have been better if Miss Priss had been gracious enough to admit that her GPA would not have been as high if she had been taking the regular course load, as opposed to the diet one, and acknowledged the other kid's accomplishments for taking a different courseload, but ohhhhh no. She had to have the (empty) honor all to herself. Further, she had the gall to demand more than two million dollars in damages for all the trauma the experience caused her.

I'm sorry, but that sounds like a greedy, grubby, whiney little #$%# to me.

The principle conditions of her dibilitating "condition" are:
1) She gets "tired" (apparently, she gets tired enough that she cannot withstand the rigors of going to school, but it's not bad enough that she can't do community work with her brother every day, nor plagarize articles for the local paper to help get her name out....imagine that)

2) She suffers bronchial-centered attacks (like many asthmatics (SP?). News flash....LOTS of people do, and most of them don't have private tutors because of it....they go to the local Walgreens, pick up an inhaler, and truck on to school.

But you know what....I get tired sometimes too, and this morning I was quite short of breath as I came up the stairs to work. I believe I should use Little Miss Muffett here as a shining example and sue the bank for making me endure the rigors of daily work life.....2 million in heinous damages might be too rich though....a cool mil, perhaps?



-=Vel=-

[TCO]

Originally posted by Smiley
This reminds me of something that happened with David Cash, a student accepted to UC Berkeley in 1997.

During the summer before he attends college, he was with a friend in Vegas. His friend sexually assaulted and killed a little kid in a bathroom stall while he waited outside the stall, fully knowing what his friend was doing. Although he himself had done nothing illegal, naturally people were outraged when they heard of his gross indifference in the situation, for he had no reason to expect violence from his friend at the time.

So, when word got out this guy was coming to Berkeley, there were mass protests in front of the administration building to reject this guy's admission. The school, however, had no legal grounds to do that. When Cash (a nuclear engineering major :0 !!!) arrived on campus that fall, he was picketed by hundreds of angry students demanding him to leave and had to be protected by the cops. Over time pressure on him to get out dropped off, and he himself didn't do anything bad either, and for all practical purposes has disappeared from the map.

somebody needs to get all Charles Bronsonon him.

[TCO]

People have talked about this dynamic involved with AP grades getting an extra bounce for a long time. I don't have an issue with her getting the highest GPA and being valedictorian. What if the top two people had each had a couple B's and the one with more APs (or percent APs) had won? No one would care. I do think that she lacked a lot of grace to complain about it. And the monetary damages are rediculous.

[Velociryx]

quote:
The quickest, most expedient solution was to give the little whiney $%&$%# her way and save the taxpayers a lot of money.


This would only be something that sways the decision to a moron who has no clue how the legal system works.

Imran: Uh huh. And let me guess.....no lawyer has EVER violated Attorney-Client privledge, right? And no judge has ever used his position for personal gain.


Riiiight.

I think that business and law are fairly similar in that the way they're taught in school has precious little to do with the day to day realities of practicing either....

-=Vel=-

[Imran Siddiqui]

Only to idiots that read some scandel and believe the entire system works that way .

[Velociryx]

Ahhh, but that's just the thing....I'm not talking about the system in general....I'm talking about this particular case.

It's true, as a whole, the system doesn't function that way, but being that those who run the system are human beings, it is undeniable that human emotion enters into the picture and sways the equation. If you choose to pretend otherwise, I'm not about to try and change your mind.

At the end of the day though, the poor, suffering little girl got *exactly* what was coming to her....justice served...

-=Vel=-

[Agathon]

Actually from reading this, that girl would have fitted in well at Harvard. A friend of mine is doing his PhD there; a working class English guy with a BPhil from Oxford. I seem to remember him telling me he couldn't stand the Harvard undergrads; he thought they were up themselves and ambitious to the point of rampant criminality. Weird if you compare them with Oxford people - I've never met one of those I didn't like, and it's a better university.

I hope someone realises soon that this method of determining admissions is completely hopeless and promotes exactly the wrong sort of behaviour.

We get some of this at U of T - one student sued a friend of mine for finding him guilty of plagiarism and I've seen people come and yell at TAs wanting higher grades and do everything in their power (go behind backs, try to get favours done) for the most trivial differences in assessment. It's very dispiriting. I wish we didn't have to give tests at all and could just grade the students on how good we think they are.