Black Mississippi student forced to share valedictorian title with white student who had lower GPA

[Igel]

14. The takeaway really depends on who you believe.

The school or the mother.

One has access to the information, but we suspect it of being racist.

The mother has access to less information--what she thinks she knows she may not have right--but we want to believe her. Since we believe her, that means the school's lying, and why would the school be lying? Because it's racist, meaning we were right not to trust it.

It's called assuming the premise.

Some assume the mother's in the right just because she's a private citizen. Others assume she's right because of some salient feature that makes her imminently more trustworthy. I don't.

If the case is simply chucked out of court--which we're very unlikely to hear about, because correcting an outrage-producing story is strictly counterproductive to anything but the truth--it means the mother filed a frivolous suit and the judge agreed. I mean, seriously: What's the mother going to do, present her daughter's report cards and all of the other students'? No, she's probably relying on her daughter's report.

The real risk is that the judge will decide on the basis of an interpretation nobody thought reasonable for decades and done nowhere else in the state, exactly how the school should calculate GPA. If they computed GPA the same way for the 2015 school year as for 2016, he should just let it be. Consistency is more important than getting the right result.

I have to wonder to what extent FERPA protects the kids' records and hobbles the defense.