Oh Hell. This school's administration must be kidding.

Agree as long as this doesn't actually prevent her from graduating and taking the scholarship. If it's just the paper ... for $10 million I could not produce my high school diploma.

 

Well, someone posted a comment about schools wanting to pre-approve a speech. I get that part. Like a story I read recently in Newsweek about the Romney people not wanting Sarah Palin to speak at the party convention because they are scared to death what she might say.

An open microphone can be a dangerous thing.... all the moreso where teenagers are concerned.

Again, much ado about nothing in regard to her choice of words. She should apologize. School should not make a stink over it.

 

then, using your logic, why don't they just write the damn speech for her? better yet, why even have any of the graduates speak at all ... i mean it's only a graduation for, ya know, the graduates. maybe we should just start canceling graduations since open mics create such dangerous atmospheres all around this great nation.

 

Sometimes you have to let things go. This just makes the school officials look petty and childish.

 

Me neither. Have no clue what happened to the thing.

This strikes me as a fuss over nothing. No real harm either way. She doesn't need the piece of paper to move on with her life, it's basically just a wall decoration.

If she really wants it, it won't kill her to give the apology. And if school administrators don't want to be mocked by the national online media, they need to stop these stupid power trips for absurdly petty reasons. They could get away with that shit in the pre-internet era, not so much today.

 

Let's see, our valedictorian just used the phrase "how the hell do I know?" lightheartedly in her graduation speech. At this point, I think it would be a good idea to completely alienate ourselves from her. You know, to teach her a lesson.

I hope that she goes on to be very successful. And when the school comes back to ask for her support in any form, she tells them they can fuck right the hell off. If they ask why, she can tell them it's a confidential matter that she really can't discuss any further.

 

Give 'em hell, Kaitlin.

 

Both sides need to back off their principles and let things go. The girl should apologize, and the school should give her the diploma. Neither side is blameless in this unintended lesson in Journalism 101 as concerns the difference between written and spoken words.

The former is typically much more "edited" than the latter, and it sounds like that's what happened here. The girl knew, in writing it, that "hell" wouldn't go over, and that it would be edited, if not by her, then by others. So she did it herself.

Now, I don't think she changed the word in the course of her speech on the basis of any principle or with any intent to lie, or even to do something willful along the lines of "Screw it, I'm just gonna say what I want." I think "hell", and not heck, is just...what came out. While speaking, only she could edit herself, and she didn't (and I'm guessing she actually even realized it, in her mind but too late, about a second after the word slipped out of her mouth).

These days, no one bats an eye at swear/dirty words in casual settings or in casual speech. The problem was, this was not a casual event.

The school valedictorian should have been smart enough to understand that, and should have been careful to moderate herself accordingly because while she had the floor live, no one else could do it for her.

 

How the Hades do I know? = problem solved.

 

Yeah, that just rolls right off the tongue.

 

She should apologize, take the diploma, then tell the school to kiss her ass and burn in hell.

Or she could just apologize, take the diploma, rip it up and flip them off. #Heel

 

Not saying she was without blame, but the school officials look much worse in all this.