Every year, hundreds of WHHS SENIORS meticulously calculate a myriad of factors as they aim to maneuver their way into their dream schools. And every year, thousands of other WHHS underclassmen prepare their grades as best they can until their upperclassman days come. So when it started to circulate that class rank was being abolished, for many the initial reaction was confusion.

Student Congress President SENIOR Bengy Mitchell was one of the first students to catch wind of the situation.

“It started out where I was just kind of hearing little things about it here and there. I didn’t think it was anything too serious, or any decision was being made for certain,” Mitchell said.

“And then as I started to uncover more and more through talking to administrators and my advisors and other students, especially those who are on the LSDMC (Local School Decision Making Committee) Board and ILT (Instructional Leadership Team) Board, I started to realize how serious of an issue this was, and that there were already a lot of things decided about it.”

Class rank is one of many indicators colleges look at during the admissions process. It is a measure of how each student compares to their peers in terms of Grade Point Average. Class rank is particularly valuable in determining class difficulty; if a WHHS student who gets Bs or Cs maintains a mid range class rank, colleges see that those Bs and Cs were harder to get, in comparison to a student at an easier school who may have the same class rank with As and Bs.

However, class rank can also have heavy psychological implications, especially at a school as academically competitive as WHHS.
“From the stories that I heard, they said, some kids would sabotage their friends and take CCP classes over the summer to get their GPA up so that they’re higher ranked,” SENIOR Zuri Williams, who is a student representative on the LSDMC and SENIOR Class President, said. Williams insists that summer is a necessary time for students to unwind from their academic stress, and that too much academic focus during this time can lead to negative psychological effects.

Of course, it’s not an easy decision to make, and the correlation between class rank and psychological stress is still hotly debated by proponents of class rank. As such, there was a divide in the consensus reached by parts of the SENIOR class.

“From the students I talked to, it seemed like the students who were higher up in the ranks wanted to keep it and the students who were lower wanted to get rid of it. So it did appear that people were looking out for themselves and not necessarily the greater interest of the student body as a whole,” Mitchell said.

Though widely unknown among the general student populace, the LSDMC is the highest ranking decision making committee for each school in the district. In order to try to hear student voices, the Cincinnati Public Schools website says, “Optional members [of the LSDMC] may include 2-3 students.” At WHHS each year, Student Congress votes for one junior and one SENIOR to participate on the board.

The final decision reached by the LDSMC was that class rank would be eliminated in 2021. Details regarding its effect on Valedictorian have been postponed.

Regardless of the decision reached, the impact of the class rank decision extends beyond its immediate implications and into the voice students have in future decisions. A decision-making committee hungry for student input has finally found it, and students looking to make their voices heard, in many instances, have only recently found out how.

“I think the LSDMC will now come to Student Congress whenever they have a big decision like this to try to get student body’s input,” Williams said.