BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Here's one to add to the list of jobs you never want: National Honor Society adviser.
The recent controversy at Grant County High School is enough reason why. Two 17-year-old students are suing after being denied honor society membership, they say, because they were pregnant.
This is typically the only time National Honor Society advisers get attention, when they may have made the wrong call.
If you want to get through to an adviser, you've got months of easy access. Rare are the calls, notes or e-mail of thanks for overseeing a program that promotes scholarship, recognizes hard work, helps worthy teen-agers get into college. Honor society advisers are expected to perform their duties simply for the inherent pleasure, or for a "stipend" that averages perhaps a dollar a day.
On the other hand, the month not to try reaching them is the one that follows the annual induction ceremony. That's when their phone rings off the hook with parents demanding to know why their child didn't make it (sometimes despite cheating scandals, lack of participation in school activities, or marginal grades). These conversations tend to run long.
There is one variation: Have a high induction rate, heavy on grade-point-average and light on service and character, for instance, and the phone calls come from parents of the well-rounded students, complaining about diluted standards.
In short, National Honor Society advisers have about a million ways to fail.
Unfair decision
The Grant County incident appears to be a legitimate one. If Chasity Glass and Somer Chipman have been singled out for exclusion because of pregnancy -- while other students did not have to pass a requirement of sexual chastity -- the decision is unfair. It leaves a loophole for sexually active students who never get pregnant, have abortions or father children without publicly taking responsibility for them.
No matter how much adolescent premarital sexual activity deviates from "character," the rules have to be enforced equitably, or not at all.
The problem, for schools and advisers, is that right now the moral waters are unbelievably murky and "rules" nearly nonexistent.
For example, what precisely is "character"? The nation as a whole has a problem coming up with a definition. No wonder schools -- especially small groups of teachers who typically form National Honor Society selection committees -- should quake at the thought.
Minimum character
Many chapters require only "the bare minimum of character," according to David Cordts, associate director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, which oversees the honor society. They ask a record free of disciplinary action or criminal arrests, and perhaps decent conduct grades. Sometimes they put the responsibility on the students themselves to decide if anything makes them unworthy of recognition for high character.
And sometimes it works.
But other times teachers are left to decide complicated moral dilemmas. The top-ranked junior who was caught cheating on a test at the beginning of freshman year. The student who meets all requirements, but lives with her boyfriend. The scholar who openly discusses seeking treatment for drug abuse. The senior leader who had discipline problems as a 14-year-old but made a complete turnaround. The good student who has no school leadership credentials but has taken courageous stands on social issues in the community.
Aren't we glad we're not the ones to make the call?
Which is exactly the point.
Perhaps if we as parents, grandparents, friends, neighbors and community members were willing to define character more clearly -- and enforce moral standards down through the years -- National Honor Society advisers wouldn't have to.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
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