My high school has a rather popular newspaper that comes out around every few months. They will be releasing the last one soon, and according to the editor-in-chief, they will dedicate a whole column listing where every senior is going to college. Individual names and all.
What’s YOUR opinion on this?
Personally, I’m not ashamed/embarrassed of my college in any way. However, I can understand why this may be an issue to some students. Especially since they were not notified of it, nor were we asked for permission.
If i got into a great school i would LOVE that. However, it’s messed up to the kids who can’t afford top notch educations or are just unqualified. My senior class will have around 500 kids so there’s no way this is happening. Everyone posts FB statuses though!
Not getting formal permission to publish the information is an oversight that the school paper needs to correct. It is plain and simply bad journalistic practice.
Every year, the last edition of Happykid’s high school’s newspaper publishes the after-graduation plans of every student who releases the information for publication. It was always interesting to see so many different goals - University A, College B, military service, work. By using the self-reported plans, I was able to work out statistics that “Newsweek Top 100” high school didn’t publish on it’s website: The most popular college every single year was the local community college. The second most popular (with a head count of about half the number headed to the CC) was the flagship U, after that the combined total for other in-state publics. Famous Name Us were well down the list.
But it also was important to remember that these are the plans in place at graduation time. Many of them were changed by the fall. And of course, a certain number of students didn’t report any plans at all for whatever reason, and didn’t appear in the publication.
Also, it matters where the paper gets the information. The school can’t release the info. in student records whenever it wants to whomever it wants. I think violating FERPA laws can endanger their federal funding.
I feel this is fine as long as the people whose names will be in the publication are asked permission. Clearly this information is gained through word of mouth. This is fine when people voluntarily give up the info but it’s a problem when Judy finds out through Sharon that Mindy is going to X University.
I would find it very off-putting if my name ended up in the high school bulletin if I purposefully didn’t tell anyone. The people who weren’t asked permission may have very personal reasons for not revealing to the entire high school their college choice. However, as long as participation is voluntary, I think it’s very nice and entertaining to see/read/hear what the seniors’ plans are. They were a part of the school for four years and are now off to a new chapter in their lives…it’s a nice touch for the school to contribute to the closing chapter.
Our school paper does this (~530 people in a class) every yeasr; I think participation is voluntary (I know someone whose name wasn’t there last year), but most seniors (even those going to community college) partake in it. We do have a rather impressive list of college acceptances, however.
My school did this last year and I thought it was interesting. If they are ashamed of their college already then they probably aren’t gonna have a very good experience for the next 4 years. My school is pretty big so I can’t know ~900 graduating seniors’ plans through “word of mouth.”
So you’re saying that people who don’t go to “elite” colleges should be ashamed of it and only people who get into top schools should be proud? @0br0123
Well, my school’s ‘newpaper’ publishes short articles online; earlier this year, seniors volunteered to share what college they wanted to get into the most.
More on topic: I think if the school newpaper gets permission from all the kids, they sure, they should do it. I know that my school publishes the list of who is going to what college in the yearbook, but our class sizes are very small- the largest grade this year is 86 kids. However, at my school, everyone’s very open about where they’re going to college–seniors announce what schools they got in and are going to in assemblies.
Our schools paper does this, but only for those that get accepted to top 25 schools and UF (without permission, might I add). I’d be fine with it if participation was voluntary.
@0br0123 The local community college is the most common college for people to go to from my school. There’s nothing wrong with that. A lot of them have immigrant parents from Mexico or something who never even got the chance to go to college. Community college is a way for them to rise above that and it’s cheap too. (I heard it’s free here in California.) They can’t all afford to go to your fancy 4-year schools and many people with immigrant parents are not informed about college in the United States, so they don’t know about the financial aid at the tippy-top schools. Even my own sister is going to a community college. I have no reason to be ashamed. But me and my family have many reasons to be proud.
@dsi411 That’s why I said its not something to be proud of in most cases calm down. If you’re given the same opputunities in school as someone who can make it to the ivy league, a lot is expected. Sure some don’t care and can’t afford. I already stated that. Clearly you’re biased since your sister is in CC, and that’s great for her
@0br0123 That’s okay. I just don’t like the prestige obsessed mindset that some people have. And everyone isn’t lucky enough to realize how important high school is early on. I don’t blame them.
@dsi411 yeah I totally see where you’re coming from, I had no idea about the whole admissions process until junior year. It really shows on my transcript
Our newspaper does a senior edition at the end of every year where we have senior wills and plans; it’s up to each senior to submit their wills and plans so it’s completely optional.
How does your school’s paper get the list of colleges? Because while they could get a list from guidance, I don’t know if guidance would have a complete list of every student’s post high school plans…I know our guidance department doesn’t. Furthermore, while it could be argued that it’s unethical or whatever for the newspaper to print it, it would be unethical (and even illegal) for the school to release that information against a student’s will, so that’s more on the school than it is on the newspaper.
@CE527M My school gets it from the guidance office. Every senor has to return back a list of colleges where they were accepted, rejected, or waitlisted. They said this info is used for our school’s profile and to send our final transcripts.
