By Annie Ewry
The students that have been going over the top in their high school career face a new system.
Delta has adopted a new reward system for graduation this year. Instead of the original Valedictorian and Salutatorian, Delta will now be recognizing students according to Latin honors; cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude.
This new system will award according to:
Cum Laude – GPA of 9.5-10.
Magna Cum Laude – GPA 10.01-10.6.
Summa Cum Laude – GPA of 10.61 – 12.
Summa cum laude is the award that the top ranked students receive. Summa cum laude means “with highest praise.”
Senior Katie Shue is the top student as of now. On the 12 point scale she has a GPA of 11.8.
“ I don’t know if I 100% understand it but I think that it’s a better way to appreciate every student and it takes a lot more into consideration when it comes to who deserves what,” Katie said.
This new system can be a controversial topic for some students because they don’t quite agree with these changes, but for Katie, she understands how this can benefit and give more students recognition.
Katie never made it a goal to be number one. Being the top student came as an extra achievement just by her aiming for good grades.
Katie said during her sophomore year she found out she had a chance of being the number one student. She said this influenced her to try harder in her classes to try to maintain this role.
Katie says it’s always been about the grade rather than the role.
“I wish I participated more in classes, asked more questions and talked more to my teachers,” she said.
Obtaining such high grades can come as a great task for some students but for Katie, she’s always been able to balance her schedule and pay good attention in class.
She says the best way to manage all of the assignments is understanding how much time each assignment is going to take and how to fit that into your schedule.
For other students this achievement has been their goal for a long time.
“I’ve worked my entire life to be valedictorian or salutatorian so now everyone with (a similar) GPA is graduating with the same honors,” Hailie Woodring said.
Hailie is the runner up student with a GPA of almost 11.7.
With the old system Hailie would have been recognized as the Salutatorian but with this new system she will be also recognized as summa cum laude.
Hailie says now this designation doesn’t really mean anything because students that are taking honors classes are graduating with the same award as students that have all “simple” classes.
Hailie says she’s not very fond of this change. Although she doesn’t fully understand it, she says she 100% believes that they should have kept the old system simply because she feels it’s not fair to students who have been working so hard for this spot.
Hailie has formed a new mindset when it comes to getting her assignments done.
“My strategy is to find a way to care about it,” Hailie said.
Hailie says if you care about what you’re doing, you’re going to be more passionate about it. She believes that when you create the mindset of “what I’m doing now will help me later” it will change the way you view these assignments and how much you care about them.
Each honor has a different sash color for graduation. As of May 6, the administrators have picked two of the three colors. They have chosen white and silver but have not yet decided on a third color or which honor was getting which color.
This new system allows them to recognize and honor 44 students (as of now) rather than just two.
“At the end of the semester, after everyone has taken their final exams and grades are stored, the guidance counselors look down through the GPAs and can determine how many of each honor we have,” Principal Joey Gossett said.
The guidance counselors are the ones who go through everyone’s GPA and find out the top students. This year they have a little more work to do since there are three Latin honors and many more spots.
When Mr. Chris Conley was the principal, he brought about the idea of changing the graduation system to Latin honors. The school board then voted on the idea and accepted it.
Gossett took over as principal when Conley left to become superintendent at Cowan early this school year. She says a conflict of this change could be that the top two students could potentially be upset because they aren’t being recognized as Salutatorian or Valedictorian.
Although this could be a conflict there are benefits, also.
Aside from the fact that they are now able to honor more students, colleges also use this same Latin honor system and many other schools are starting to test out this new system.
Gossett says that in previous years there have been ties for Salutatorian and Valedictorian. Tiebreakers are hard to deal with when you only have two spots. Moving to this honor system they won’t have to worry about ties.
