Smack articles feature two perspectives: one for, and one against.
In Defense of Honors Convocations
By Patrick Stamos ‘27
I understand where the critiques of Sacred Heart’s Honors Convocation system come from. I do. I have never gotten an Honors Convocation. As a junior, this means that I am 0-5 for getting an Honors Convocation at each ceremony and 0-35 if you go by each of my opportunities in class. Believe me, I know what it feels like to be stung by not getting one. Ironically, this has given me the clairvoyance to see what the actual problem is: our school’s culture.
I myself used to tie Honors Convocation too much to my self-worth. I’ve gradually developed a much more nuanced and healthy understanding of why honors convocations just don’t come my way, and this has made each fruitless award ceremony easier. Because of my experience, I see why many see the ceremonies negatively. But this isn’t due to the ceremonies themselves; it’s due to our school culture’s high academic pressures, which are divorced from actual happiness in life.
To be blunt, there’s not much to grapple with once you move past the culture surrounding it, as it’s really just an award ceremony. It is a way for teachers to recognize students’ accomplishments.
Awards and competitions are not inherently bad. We are lucky enough to live in a meritocratic society that allows us to have the most qualified people in the most important positions. For instance, there can’t be 7 billion neuroscientists; there is competition for that role in society that leads to you having the best chances of having someone qualified to take that scalpel to your brain. Competition is necessary to achieve that standard of quality in society. This bleeds down from the job market to schools. The recognition of students at Honors Convocation is contributing to something bigger.
We go to SHP; The “P” stands for “Preparatory.” We are a private institution with the explicit goal to prepare students for college, which itself is a crucial component of the processes preventing accidental lobotomies during brain surgery. With this all interconnected, Honors Convocation is a microcosm of the wider societal process, maintaining the historically unprecedented standards of living and care we’ve obtained in the United States and other countries with similar processes.
This process isn’t always pretty, but it needs to exist for the kernel of beauty in our lives to not be unceremoniously extinguished. If you don’t win an award or succeed in a certain career, then your inherent value as a person isn’t gone. Your life is still valuable. You can still be happy. There are a million other jobs that you might enjoy. Even if you can’t find a job you enjoy, there will always be so much more to life for you to enjoy in spite of that. It’s always a possibility that you can find the girl or guy of your dreams in the place where you least expect them, or that you form friendships that bring you real happiness, or a million other possibilities customized to you as a person. It just so happens that all of them are contingent on your surgeon not accidentally killing you.
We need competition to keep our society running. Considering that Honors Convocation is relatively low-stakes and is at a school explicitly intended to prepare students for a competitive life environment, I find it very difficult to impeach the practice itself. If we as a community didn’t mentally tie life-ruining stakes to this practice, it would be perfectly fine. I’m confident every person reading this has the capacity to find happiness. This will become more apparent if you direct your frustrations with Honors Convocation towards the unhealthy cultural context that actually creates these issues.
Honors Convocation Is Harmful
By Caitlin Grahmann ‘28
Here’s the thing about Honors Convocation. Even if you swear you’re above it, it doesn’t affect you, or it is not important — something about it is.
I know what it feels like to sit in your seat, hear your name called, feel that rush of pride. I also know how it feels to smile and uncross your legs in preparation for your favorite class. The class you spend extra time on, the class in which the teacher is basically your best friend. And then not hear your name.
Sophie Xie ‘28 shared that “at first, to be honest, I [didn’t] really care about Honors Convocation,” but that as “people were talking about it,” it made her feel “pressured to think that … I should have worked hard to get [one].” That quiet feeling of “I should have” is powerful. The feeling of not being good enough. Sidney Hsiao ‘27 described this as something “that really demoralizes students,” making them feel like “they’re not really doing enough, [or] they’re not doing well enough in class.”
Something that holds so much weight in our community should have clear criteria. But, right now, it doesn’t always feel that way.
Hsiao put it plainly: “I think there’s a correlation between how much you try… and… a little bit of how much the teacher likes you.” Whether that perception is accurate or not, the fact that students even question it reveals a lack of transparency. A sophomore shared that they believe “the requirements to earn an Honors Convocation are very subjective as well, making it rather confusing sometimes.” Mr. Douglas Hosking, an English teacher and former SHP student, speaks directly to this ambiguity, saying that “people end up walking out of there getting a whole mixed set of messages.” That mixed messaging doesn’t just disappear when we leave Harman; it lingers in the air. In classrooms. In grades. In how students view themselves.
Religious Studies teacher Ms. Jessica Mueller notes how picking students for an Honors Convocation is an “imperfect process.” No rubric can fully capture the entirety of a student. That’s okay. We don’t expect them to. However, when these processes result in a single name being called in front of the whole school, that imperfection feels heavier. Reflecting on his experience as a student, Hosking said that he “didn’t quite know what people were looking for and it felt like it was different teacher by teacher.”
If we are going to continue this tradition, if we are going to let it shape how students measure themselves, then it cannot operate on ambiguity. Right now, too many students walk out of that gym not inspired, not affirmed, but confused. Confused about what excellence actually means. Confused about whether their effort mattered. And when students are confused, they fill in the silence for themselves.
They assume they don’t try hard enough.
They assume they aren’t smart enough.
They assume that they are not good enough.
Hosking says that it is a valid question, asking, “why did that person get all those awards and I didn’t?… It’s troubling that none of us have answered this question.” We don’t discuss what this means. This lack of an answer.
Hosking adds that “teachers are then given fifteen word slots.” Fifteen words to determine a semester of growth, of hours of effort. Fifteen words to justify why one student should stand up, and why the rest should remain seated.
English teacher Ms. Stephanie Bowe Ullman acknowledges that “for some students, it does increase a sense of competition.” Even if that competition remains largely unspoken about, it hums beneath the surface. It lives in comparison, in glancing down the rows of seats, in counting how many times someone’s name has been called.
A sophomore put it bluntly, saying that they believe “Honors Convocation pits students against each other and validates a few while causing many to feel insecure.” The structure of the ceremony itself creates scarcity. Ullman echoes this, saying how she “see[s] that every student in [her] class has done something that is worthy of an honor card… so I find it really difficult to pick just one student.” Hosking also speaks to this, saying “we… don’t have enough awards to give.” There are only so many names, a limited number of the elect few. Validation becomes limited, and anything limited becomes competitive.
The sophomore went further, describing the Honors Convocation as “a twisted lottery that is not only in front of your grade but the entire school twice a year.” A lottery. Not a clear standard. Not a transparent rubric. A public drawing where effort does not always feel tied to outcome.
And that public nature matters.
It is one thing to fall short quietly, in the privacy of a gradebook. It is another to sit in Harman twice a year while a few people are recognized in front of everyone, watching. Learning what achievement looks like.
When recognition becomes the visible endpoint of learning, the meaning of learning shifts. Classes start to feel like theaters, everyone poised for performance. Peers and friends start to feel like competitors rather than collaborators. Growth and effort begin to feel insufficient if not announced.
But at its core, school is supposed to be about learning. About “a deep respect for intellectual values.” Ullman says that the Honors Convocation “gets away from the spirit of Goal Two… because… it’s not about actually being excited about your work and your classes, but… about getting this award.”
Hosking puts it simply, saying, “when we’re talking about learning, there’s no winning.” Learning is not finite. It is not scarce. One student’s growth should not diminish another’s.
The silence in Harman after a name is called shouldn’t be filled with doubt or confusion. It shouldn’t be a ‘twisted lottery’ where effort is the ante and luck is the draw. If school is truly about the journey of the mind, then we must stop pretending that the only growth that matters is the kind that fits into a fifteen-word slot. After all, if learning has no winners, then it’s time we stopped hosting a ceremony that creates so many losers.
