Gowns opinion: What’s the problem?

by Ally Lenguyen, Arts and Entertainment editor

On the day before graduation, FVHS seniors were told they’d all be sitting together for graduation, instead of Fountain Valley’s traditional seating arrangement: students with GPAs of 4.0 and above dressed in white gowns sitting in the front of the field for graduation while students with GPAs of 3.99 and below dressed in blue gowns lined up in rows in the back.

So some students, presumably someone with at 4.0 or better, started a petition to revert back to the traditional seating, stating they want to be “FULLY recognized for their efforts.”

But isn’t having a white gown enough? Isn’t having those brightly colored tassels hanging from a student’s neck recognition enough? What’s the problem with sitting beside their fellow peers with a gown a different color than their own?

There shouldn’t be a problem. There isn’t anything wrong with sitting next to a fellow Baron just because their gown is blue. Isn’t it possible that they may have worked just as hard as you, if not harder in certain areas? The reality of a student’s hard work and excellence isn’t only reflected in a number, or in a particular color. It’s true that some students have honestly worked harder than others, putting in a kind of effort that can’t be measured, but will sitting next to someone with a gown a different color than your own truly make a difference?

Students are suddenly in uproar and starting petitions over the fact that they have to sit next to their own fellow peers with a gown different than their own, going so far as to make arguments that sitting with white gowns and blue gowns mixed together won’t “look as nice”. But is that really what matters—how nice we all look lined up at graduation? The argument runs deeper than that for sure, as students claim what they want the most is to be recognized the way the graduating classes before them have been recognized and how they’ve been believing they would be the moment they arrived at FVHS.

Sitting next to someone with a blue gown isn’t going to take away from the fact that your gown is white. It isn’t going to change that fact that it’s clear to anyone who can tell between white and blue that you worked hard. Students shouldn’t suddenly resent the idea of sitting next to someone else because their gown is white or blue because these people are fellow Barons. 

In the grand scheme of things, all students are Barons. The students all struggled through these four years to be standing in the middle of OCC’s stadium to be recognized for making it through high school.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting be recognized. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have something to show all the great things a student managed to accomplish throughout high school.

But there is something wrong with being resentful toward the idea of sitting beside your fellow Baron just because their gown may be a different color.