COMMENTARY: High School Valedictorian Denied Diploma Over Graduation Speech Using Word "Hell"
I'd still side with the valedictorian for saying "Hell" because I don't think it's that bad. Maybe a century or so ago it would be a curse word, but not today. When you travel at the speed of language, you go with the flow of traffic.
However, it's a little dodgy in the sense that if she had given the speech to the faculty for review and consciously put "heck" instead of Hell, it means she made a conscious effort to censor what she planned to say in the speech and didn't abide by it.
Though the school seems a bit harsh for withholding a diploma over that. Graduation is a milestone where the world is ahead of you. It means going against the grain and striving to be different. The school doling out a punishment of withholding a diploma is like subtly showing the graduates what to expect in the real world with institutions that will attempt to hold you back or maintain the status quo.
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High School Valedictorian Denied Diploma Over Graduation Speech Using Word "Hell"
By Dylan Stableford, Yahoo! News | The Lookout - 3 hrs ago
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An Oklahoma high school valedictorian who used the word "hell" in her graduation speech in May has yet to receive her diploma.
Kaitlin Nootbaar graduated from Prague High School with a 4.0 grade point average, her father, David Nootbaar, told KFOR-TV. But school administrators told him that Kaitlin would have to submit a written apology in order to get her diploma.
"We went to the office and asked for the diploma and the principal said, 'Your diploma is right here but you're not getting it. Close the door, we have a problem,'" David Nootbaar told the network.
"She worked so hard to stay at the top of her class," he said. "This is not right."
In her speech-inspired by a similar address in "Eclipse: The Twilight Saga"-Kaitlin recounted how annoying it is to be constantly asked what she wants to do as graduation approached. "How the hell do I know?" she said, according to her father. "I've changed my mind so many times."
In the version she submitted to the school for approval, "hell" was "heck." But in the version she delivered at graduation, "hell" it was.
The school declined to comment. "This matter is confidential and we cannot publicly say anything about it," Prague schools Superintendent Rick Martin said in a statement to KFOR.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/valedictorian-denied-diploma-speech-hell-134805221.html