There was a huge discussion at my school when we decided to withdraw our school stats from all sorts of publications. Basically Haverford wants students to be able to find out for themselves what the school is about. By giving out specific stats, potential students are receiving a biased view of the school. Any information can be found on our website and students can inquire about anything they want, but we won't be personally making that information public in US News or any of our admission handbooks. This happened over the summer, but being all tied up in my Explo world, I didn't find out about it until school started.

One of the arguments criticizing our school for this had to do with us not being a very well known school, and being ranked helps us get our name out. The other argument is that we won't get as much money because we won't be nationally ranked. Getting money is always one of our biggest concerns because we have a terrible endowment. It makes us want to cry. And a lot of people thought we would lose a lot of applicants because other liberal arts schools in the top ten hadn't signed on to this initiative so they would still be ranked and we would be shafted. We already lose applicants to Amherst, Swat, and other schools ranked higher than us, so this initiative would only increase that gap. But that isn't really a valid argument now since almost all of the top ten liberal arts schools have signed on so we're not really losing out.

So what do I make of this? I never liked rankings anyways. I always thought they were a load of crap and a school should be judged by more than those limited criteria. I didn't even know what Haverford was ranked before I came here. So I think it's splendid. And I think most of the student body thinks it's great too. The argument a lot of people had was that we don't want people coming here just cuz of our rank. We want them to come because they like Haverford and they think it fits them. I think my school feels really strongly about not quantifying achievements and the quality of our education.

Which leads me to my next topic. Last night we had Plenary (where we pass resolutions to our constituion and other things). One of the resolutions proposed was getting rid of the honors recognitions on the booklet at Commencement. All the honors, high honors, phi beta kappa, summa cum laude, etc. stuff. The reasoning behind this was that printing academic achievements goes against the Haverford ethos of being self motivated and non competitive. There was a huge debate about this, and the resolution only passed by 53%.

I just couldn't buy into the pro side of this debate. Graduation is one day. And not only that, but it's the ONLY time that academic achievements are honored. Plus the people who are awarded those honors deserve it. Now the other side said that hard work isn't always measured by your GPA so it's not fair to give some people recognition and not others. Well, life's not fair and you won't be awarded for all of the good things you do and all the hard work you put into things. But this is just one way for academics to be honored. And getting back to what I said before about us not wanting to quantify achievements; people at this school have a huge problem with being smart. Everyone's so concerned about being modest and not flaunting their achievements that I think people are afraid to be smart. Not saying that we suppress knowledge and growth but that we're so concerned with not being competitive and maintaining grade confidentiality that academics is just not honored.

This resolution would also keep athletic achievements on the commencement booklet. So basically it's ok to have an athlete vs. non-athlete divide, but it's not ok to single out people who have pursued academic excellence. What? No, that's lame. What about excellence in the arts? If they're going to pass this resolution at least take out athlete recognition also. Every week the athlete of the week is published in the school newspaper but there's no academic of the week. So really graduation is the only time that academic excellence is honored. Part of Haverford's mission statement is academic excellence. And at graduation you're celebrating making it through four years of college, which you don't do with amazing athletics...you need a high enough GPA to graduate. Graduation celebrates academics. So really it should be athletic achievements that are taken out.

A lot of people were saying that by printing the names of those who got honors, then that establishes a spirit of competition at Haverford. But the way I see it, the fact that we're so concerned about not being competitive only means that we'll try our hardest to NOT be competitive and prove that commencement recognition of honors DOESN'T effect our school. So there's kind of a paradox there. Publishing the honors will only encourage us to not fall into the expected paradigm of competition.

And shit it's graduation. You're happy to be graduating. Who's going to be jealous of the person sitting next to them for working their ass off and getting the highest honors. It's your class and you'll be happy for everyone. Ok anyways this topic is probably extremely dull for everyone since it only concerns me and my school, but I felt really strongly about this and was mad when the resolution passed. Luckily though it doesn't officially change the commencement procedures; it only means it'll be presented to the commencement committee as our point of view. And since it barely passed I don't think it'll do anything.

Ok I'm getting sick of talking about my school.

I mailed in my study abroad application about a week ago. I stuck on 27 stamps. I'm so excited for Belgium. It'll be sweet. It won't be Haverford and that's the best part. I love my school but I'm ready for a break. I want to be something else besides a hardworking college student. I want to be a goof up. I probably won't do an excellent job of that though...I tend to feel too badly about not working or trying hard. It's ok; I'll make myself get over it once I'm in Europe.

I'm looking at the list of things I said I would talk about. And I'm trying to briefly touch on all of them. It's a long list. How did I get it in my head that I had to talk about all these things.

Oh yes, reading is my life. Seriously. That's all I do. I read. And write. Before all I would read about was all the sexual images in shakespeare. Anything open is a vagina. Anything sticklike is a penis. And anything that goes into something else is penetration. PHALLIC IMAGES EVERYWHERE YOU CAN'T ESCAPE IT. Homosocial/homoerotic triangle. Everyone's perverted. But I think we're starting to move away from that.

That's all I have time for. I have to go read (big surprise).

Peace love hearts and candy corn.