18 Seniors Receive Early Cum Laude

Eighteen seniors will be inducted into the Cum Laude Society early at a dinner on Nov. 1. Each of the seniors’ cumulative GPAs was in the top five percent of the class of 2016, and the recipients were notified of the award via letters in their P.O. boxes last Friday.The students whose GPAs represent the top twenty percent of their class will attend another Cum Laude Society induction ceremony in the spring. Additionally, official spring inductees must maintain a 9.0 GPA in the spring term of their senior year to remain a member.Each of the early inductees traditionally brings a faculty guest—one who has helped significantly during his or her time at the Academy—to attend the induction dinner.The dinner also hosts a speaker, who is typically a published author in the community. History instructor and history department chair Bill Jordan will attend and speak at this year’s ceremony, along with officers of Exeter’s chapter of the Cum Laude Society. Society Secretary and science instructor Mark Hiza, Vice President and mathematics instructor Stephanie Girard and President and math instructor Jeffrey Ibbotson will all plan and attend the dinner.

“I suppose that I have engaged, especially since upper year, in a scavenger hunt of sorts to acquire a large number of As, and I’ve been successful in this capacity.”

The Cum Laude Society was established in 1907 to award scholarship and academic achievement in secondary schools and was modeled after the Phi Beta Kappa society at the college level.Ibbotson explained that the Cum Laude Society serves to recognize students who have performed exceedingly well at academics during their time at Exeter, and the early induction acts to “extol the importance of academics.” But he also acknowledged that a GPA is a far cry from the only metric by which one can measure success at the Academy.Jordan, who Ibbotson requested to speak at last year’s ceremony, initially declined the request. He said that he tends to avoid public speaking, but as he continued to contemplate what it means to teach at Exeter during last year’s strategic planning sessions, he gradually changed his mind and agreed to speak at this year’s induction dinner.“All faculty were asked to reflect on goodness and knowledge and what it means to be teaching those virtues,” Jordan said. “That got me thinking a lot about what we do here; I feel like all the work I’ve done at Exeter has to do with democracy, and that for me was a huge tie to my scholarship in the past. This dinner and society is all about scholarship.”In his speech, Jordan wished to touch upon several themes which he hoped would impact the group of attending students: democracy, Harkness and a compilation of lessons he has learned from studying African-American history.He explained that the opportunity to speak to the inductees is a special one. “It’s a room full of great kids, many of whom I know or have had in class. They’re all really intellectually engaged, thoughtful people, and so I’m sure that they’re people who care really deeply about their education for having done so well here,” he said.Jordan said that because of their earnest and sincere investment in success at the Academy, the students will share his interest in “what an Exeter education really should be about. They’ve worked so hard at it that it’s probably something they think about a lot, so I’m hoping I can help them in some small way to develop their thinking about that.”Seniors on the list were notified of the award last Friday. And while students said that grades are important to them or are an arena they strive to perform well in, they are not the sole determinants of success at the Academy.Senior Angela Song said that during her time here, grades have become less important. “I’ve come to realize that there is much more to the Exeter experience than solely classes and grades.”Senior Henry LaFond agreed. “I do consider grades to be important to me,” he said, and added that because he is at Exeter to learn, and because “grades are the means by which teachers and others evaluate that learning,” they are worth working for. That being said, Lafond explained that grades without context meant little. He would prefer to complete a class with a “less than stellar” grade than receive an A without developing intellectually or experiencing any growth.Senior Arianna Serafini said that though a high GPA doesn’t always signify the highest level of achievement or effort, it is easy to become internally competitive when it comes to grades. And while she wished grades were less important and attending Exeter was only about the learning process, “in today’s world, with today’s pressures, that’s simply [untrue].”“The issue with high grades is that once you have them, there is a tremendous pressure to maintain them... so that they start to become important to you even if you don’t want them to,” she added.Now, Song regrets the amount of time she spent on schoolwork during her prep year, which she claimed prevented her from becoming deeply involved with many clubs. Song added that she is proud of her achievement, but that grades have rarely served as an indication of how successful a class or term has been. “I’ve gotten the worst grades in some of my favorite classes. Grades have never really determined my experience in class,” she said.Senior Peter Luff said that although grades can be subjective and vary greatly between which teachers students have, the Cum Laude Society still shows that it is important to recognize students who have put lots of effort into the classes over the course of their time at Exeter. “I don’t think being a part of the ‘society’ means anything, but it felt good to have my academic work over the last four years recognized,” Luff said. He also noted that the selection has a few flaws; there is no advantage given to students who have taken very difficult courses, and new uppers may have an easier time maintaining a high GPA for three terms than four-year seniors have doing the same for nine terms.Some were surprised to learn that they received the award, but many were pleasantly delighted.LaFond “actually had no idea” that the Cum Laude Society existed before he was inducted into it. “Sure, I had some hazy notions about Early Cum and regular Cum Laude, but honestly, I never really thought seriously about what they were beyond a list of seniors,” he said. “I was excited to hear about this from Samuel Tan on Friday night,” senior Lily Friedberg said. “I suppose that I have engaged, especially since upper year, in a scavenger hunt of sorts to acquire a large number of As, and I’ve been successful in this capacity.”Serafini said that she was “excited and happy” when she received the note in her P.O. box. She also was not expecting Early Cum Laude to be released for a few more weeks, so it was a “wonderful surprise.” But she reiterated once again that because the grading system can be subjective and because grades are not an accurate representation of effort, the Cum Laude Society has its faults. “Secondary school grades are really just one aspect of a person, an aspect that will no longer be important the second we graduate high school,” she said. “So to get to celebrate right now, while someone who had a hard time adjusting during prep year doesn’t get the same recognition, seems a little silly.”Early Cum Laude SocietyYena ChoJulie ChungOwen DukeJames FoyeLily FriedbergEthan GouldMeena JagadeesanHenry LafondMandy LuPeter LuffHolly MacAlpineAndre OravitanStephanie PanJacob PressmanAriana SerafiniAngela SongCaroline SullivanSamuel Tan