Of course, it'd also be nice if people would respect what the laws actually say, rather than what they think they should say. 

A couple of today's news stories involve families who've fallen afoul of the stated rules:

The first is that of Anjali Datta, a scary-smart 16 year old girl in Grapevine, TX, who managed to not only complete a full four years of high school in three years, but did so with a 5.898 ("unprecedented" was the adjective used) GPA.  

Everyone assumed she'd be valedictorian, but it turns out the rules state that honor goes to the student with the highest GPA "for four years of high school."  FOUR years.  Not three.  So valedictorian honors go to another student (himself no academic slouch, with a GPA of 5.64).  Feelings are running high about the perceived injustice of this, as may be imagined, and it's perfectly understandable. 

Clearly Anjali ought to be the valedictorian, but just as clearly, she doesn't qualify, based on the wording of the district's rule.  It's a pity, but there it is.  Doubtless the idea was to prevent someone from transferring in from another district and nabbing the valedictorian spot, with the district desiring it to go to a student who had attended Grapevine High for their entire high school career.  Can't blame 'em for that.  Quite a reasonable desire.

Trouble is, the rule-writers neglected to factor in the teeny-tiny number of students who complete an entire high school career in three years, instead of the ordinary four.  The possibility that one of those would also score the highest GPA obviously didn't cross their minds.

The news stories don't say so, but dollars to donuts at some point in the fairly recent past there'd been a student who had the highest GPA but who'd also transferred in after having begun high school elsewhere, he or she was denied the valedictorian award because of this, and the family was Not Happy.  Not happy at all.  I can scarcely blame the school district for not wanting to risk having that family hear about another student who also didn't actually attend Grapevine High for four years but still got to be valedictorian.  In this litigous age, odds are they'd file suit about it.  Pests.

It's a fairly simple thing to fix, ISTM.  Just stipulate that the valedictorian is to be the student with the highest GPA who completed ALL high school course work at Grapevine High School in no more than four years.  That keeps out the transfer students, but allows for someone like Anjali.

BTW, her family was disappointed but accepted the decision gracefully, which is refreshing, isn't it?  And there's no need to worry too much about her, as she is one of  six Texas students to receive a "Dedman
Distinguished Scholarship, which awards $13,000 per academic year for
four years and includes supplemental funding for study abroad programs."  Basically she's getting a full-ride scholarship to UT-Austin, which is what she wanted, plus she'll be recognized at graduation for her incredible scholastic accomplishment.

I hope the rule book is changed in the way I've suggested, though.

The second story involves Arthur, a valedictorian in California who is scheduled to be deported to Armenia with his family ten days after the graduation.  Turns out his family came to America many years ago on a six-month visitor's visa and never went back to Armenia, even after having their application for an extension denied, and having lost every appeal since. 

The reason the family came here is because the father apparently discovered that whistleblowers have a rough time, having blown said whistle on a fellow employee who'd accepted a bribe that he himself had turned down.  His superiors weren't appreciative of the information, and nasty stuff began to happen to him, culminating in his house burning.

This is naturally deplorable, but sad to say, it's not sufficient to qualify for political asylum.  It's not the Armenian government as a whole that's mad at him, just the employees of the government agency at which he worked (the DMV).

The family stalled and stalled and stalled, so that years have passed and now they've got sons who hardly speak a lick of Armenian and don't remember anything about that country.  A younger son was born after they left, in fact.  Arthur, the one graduating with high honors, was born there but was very young, so has no real memory of it.

I feel really bad for them, and especially Arthur and his younger brother, but the fault lies with their parents, who refused to accept the fact that they simply don't qualify for political asylum, and presumably hoped that if they could just manage to stay in the USA long enough, the very fact they'd been here so long would trump the law.

Um, nope.  That line of reasoning is one I find truly infuriating.  Who remembers the spate of cases years ago involving would-be-adoptive-parents refusing to return babies to the birth mothers who'd changed their minds within the legal time limit?

Every single time the adoptive parents strung the case out using appeal after appeal, hoping that as the child grew older the court would decide never mind the fact the birth mother requested her child back within the allowed time frame, it's now in the best interests of the child to stay with the adoptive family because it'd be so traumatic for him to be removed from them.

Never worked, so far's I know.  All that happened was the kid would be screaming bloody murder as he's dragged away from the only family he's ever known.  Personally, I wanted to brain the adoptive parents with a big rock for being so stupidly selfish. 

Just the way I'm feeling about Arthur's parents.  Gee, guys, that plan worked a treat, didn't it?  The courts will ignore the law because you've been here so long and now it's going to be really hard to return.

No point even having laws if that sort of thing happened. 

Secondary drowning?  I'd never heard of such a thing!  

Did Little Johnny Drown During His Nap?

"He seemed to be fine," Jackson, 41, told ABCNEWS.com from her home in
Goose Creek, S.C. "I noticed nothing out of the ordinary, other than
him taking a little bit of water in and coughing and then calming
down."

Jackson estimated that Johnny had been in the pool for 45
minutes and had been wearing floatation devices on each arm, in
addition to being monitored by an adult in the pool, as well as herself
and a friend watching from pool chairs nearby.

But less than two hours after getting out of the pool, Johnny
had defecated in his pants twice and was complaining of being tired.

After being bathed and dressing himself, Johnny walked to his bed
unaided, leading his mother to believe that he was simply tired from
playing in the water.

But shortly after leaving him to nap, Jackson discovered her son unconscious and his face covered in a foam-like substance.

"My friend went back into the room where Johnny was sleeping and
noticed what appeared to be cotton balls stuffed in his nose," Jackson
said of what turned out to be the foam from his nose and mouth. "She
asked if I put them there and I said no -- I went in and saw him and
screamed for help.

"I rolled him over and his body was very limp and I realized he'd
soiled himself again and was very purplish-blue looking," said Jackson,
who then called 9-1-1. "His tongue was really swollen, too."

Johnny suffered from cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, his mother said, and was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Berkeley County Coroner Glenn Rhoad examined Johnny's body after
the incident and told ABCNEWS.com that the preliminary autopsy showed
the cause of death was asphyxiation due to drowning. Rhoad added that
the boy had a lot of water in his lungs.

Okay, that's frightening.  I can't think how many times over the years I've come up coughing and choking while swimming, or the kids have. It never once occurred to me that even once someone was out of the pool, breathing and walking under their own steam, they could still literally drown a short while later.

On an airplane, winging our way to Russia to meet our Dmitry for the first time.  

That's a real Blast From The Past, going to The Original Ivy Vine (link over there to the left, with the rest of the links) and rereading the time leading up to the adoption. 

Amazing how much I've forgotten about it all. 

I just got back from the graduation party for Elveera, and what a delight to see kids - and others - whom I've not seen in two years or more:

Back row:  Viktor, Joe, Dmitry, Dan
Front row:  Elena, Elveera, Olga

But Joe was almost invisible, so I tried again, this time adding another Viktor - this time Elveera and Olga's brother - while losing Eleevera:

I was absolutely blown away at how tall "little" Viktor has grown since I last saw him in August of '06.  Look at those hands!  He's not quite 13, so it looks as if he's got a way to grow, doesn't he?

This sort of coincidence is always a pleasure....I'd been sitting and wondering if the girls still stay in contact with Jennifer, who used to work for Gladney and was the Russian coordinator when we were adopting Dmitry, when guess who showed up?

Here she is with the honorée. 

This time I was sensible, asking Elveera which side of the coliseum I should sit on to be able to locate her tonight.  "Left side, facing the stage!"

I'll be there. 

P.S.  Okay, no I wasn't.    I tried, really I did, but hadn't realized the large parking lot to the west of the convention center had been taken over by construction of a new hotel, which eliminated a whole bunch of parking spaces.  The few parking lots were full, and people were parking at the train station to the south of East Lancaster and hiking.

I'm not up to that, especially as it'd be dark or close to by the time I left, so I came on home after driving fruitlessly around searching for a spot on the street.  Darn.  I'd been eagerly anticipating Elveera's graduation for ages, and can't believe I wound up missing it after all.  That stinks.  At least I got to see her at her party this afternoon.