The selection of a valedictorian and salutatorian has become a process of the past for many universities and high schools, including Oak Park.

Effective with the class of 2010, the Oak Park Unified School District (OPUSD) School Board adopted a “cum laude with honors” recognition program to recognize the school’s top students at graduation on Oct. 21, 2008.

The “cum laude with honors” decision was made for two major reasons. First the new system mirrored the recognition used by most universities.

And second, it permitted the school to recognize more students, a response to the increasing number of successful students at Oak Park High School.

“There were huge problems that we were experiencing prior to 2008. We even had a family who threatened a lawsuit if their child wasn’t named at least a co-valedictorian, and it eventually got to be sad that all these amazing students would get down to the point where they were just fighting over who should be valedictorian,” counselor Randy McLelland said.

In the past two decades, there have been a multitude of issues.

These range from students from different schools transferring AP and honors courses not offered at Oak Park, boosting students’ GPAs, to the master schedule not accommodating all of the AP and honors courses that the most competitive students would have liked to take.

“I think that this form of recognition is better than having just a lone valedictorian to represent a graduating class. Though one is not “number one” in their class, they would still be recognized for their efforts,” freshman Sophia Tsai said.

In 2008, Oak Park additionally chose not to weight grades and not to rank students within their respective classes. This model, McLelland claimed, was and still is used not only by colleges and universities, but also by many of the top college preparatory schools in the nation.

“Frankly, it’s a bit of an elitist attitude, but the point is we believe we have a lot of students that could be valedictorian or salutatorian at other schools that would be denied that recognition if that’s all we used,” McLelland said.

With the valedictorian and salutatorian concept, only a select few students were recognized at graduation — the students who had partaken in the most rigorous curriculum in all subject areas.

“This year alone we will have 31 students who will have achieved a 3.9 or higher GPA and who will have achieved the highest level of honor, which means they took the maximum number of AP and honors courses and to try and say only one or two of those kids is the best of Oak Park really is very limiting,” McLelland said

The “cum laude with honors” is a system of recognition based on GPA, and overall course rigor up to and including the third quarter of the student’s senior year.

Students are able, however, to submit a written request with a final transcript should their third quarter grades fall short of the qualifications.

The program consists of three levels, which include Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude and Cum Laude.

Summa Cum Laude, meaning “with the highest praise,” is the highest award possible and requires a student to achieve a 3.90 or higher GPA on a 4.00 scale.

Magna Cum Laude, meaning “with great praise,” is the second highest recognition award available and requires a student to achieve between a 3.70 and 3.89 GPA.

Cum Laude, meaning “with praise,” is the last recognition awarded at graduation and requires a student to achieve between a 3.50 and 3.69 GPA.

The Oak Park High School Associated Student Body and faculty also proposed the addition of honors recognition levels to honor those who have successfully taken honors and AP courses.

“We want to honor the people who earn better than a 3.5, but we also want to make sure that we also honor those who took demanding schedules,” math teacher Cathy Lory said.

The honors recognition levels consist of Highest Honors, High Honors, Honors and Distinction, which are awarded to students who have completed 16 or more, 11 to 15.5, six to 10.5 and .5 to 5.5 semesters of honors or AP courses respectively.

Each honors course semester counts as .5 toward the total and each AP course semester counts as one.

Students must have a minimum 3.5 unweighted GPA to qualify for any of the honors recognition levels.

These distinctions are noted on each graduate’s diploma seal and each cum laude honoree is allowed to wear a gold cord around his or her neck during the commencement ceremony.

“The cum laude has given us a chance to give a wider range of recognition to a much larger group of students. Case in point, I can tell you we have 31 student that are going to get summa cum laude, 54 that are going to get magna, 53 that are going to get cum laude,” McLelland said. “Furthermore, within these three categories there are 72 students who took 16+ AP/Honors classes and will receive the “Highest Honors” distinction as well.”