Stupid is as . . . uh . . .

An opinionator in the Post (the Post is positively oozing with delights today, ain't it?) notes a certain community's increasing All Must Have Prizes mentality:

The latest example of that . . . mentality came last week, courtesy of the Boulder Valley School District. Worried about hurting the feelings of excellent students who weren't quite at the head of the class, a committee decided to dump the tradition of having just one valedictorian at each high school graduation.

Instead, they'll honor students in groups, as colleges do, with a summa, magna and cum laude honors, according to a story in the Boulder Daily Camera by Amy Bounds.

Earlier, the district stopped calculating each student's class rank. "Getting rid of class rank, district officials said, should reduce the unhealthy competition for a high rank," Bounds wrote. And without class rankings, the valedictorian system no longer made sense.

The D-blog has noted before how he graduated fourth in his class (from the bottom), so low that the kid immediately below him in rank was known to all as "Ug-Man," but honestly, my feelings weren't hurt in the least by having a valedictorian. The only way they might have been is if my nickname had been Ug-Man. (I, of course, was the "brilliant, handsome, troubled youth whose potential reaches the stars." You can read it in the school counselor's file. His nickname, I don't know why, was "Tigger.")