Talk:Walnut Hills High School (Cincinnati, Ohio)

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Good start... pics and more refs Victuallers 10:02, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

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Contents 1 Valedictorians? 2 School Dances 3 Just a tad ridiculous 4 Reference 5 Sports? 6 Alumni

[edit] Valedictorians?

Why so many for 2005? I thought it was usual to have only one. Pzavon 03:53, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

They all had a perfect 6.0 (weighted) GPA. 8.8.201.199 22:17, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think is was a school record, 7 ... 2005 set alot of records that year

[edit] School Dances

Removed from a note in the article to this discussion page, Fatsherm said:

Pzavon, if you are going to delete this again, don't mark it as spam, it's not; as a current sudent I'll be more than willing to scan it and send it to you. You're free to edit this, but don't mark it as spam; that is offensive."

First off, the list looks like spam - being just a list of items with no connection to this particular school and no reference to a source for the information. It is simply a list of activities, several of which would seem to be impermissible at any school event (freaking, disrobing, humping, etc). That fortifies my impression of it as spam. My personal opinion is that, at the least, it lacks a neutral point of view. What are the circumstances under which these prohibitions were imposed? Why is it worth mentioning in this article? Who objects and why? Who agrees and why?

I'll not remove it again for a day or so, pending your reasonable response.

Pzavon 02:32, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the list is unencylopedic. The actual list as stated in the student handbook is somewhat longer, and for this reason it seems to have acquired some notariety (it was apparently mentioned in Playboy, although I'm not sure whether this is true or not.) I don't know whether that makes it notable enough to be worth mentioning in the article. 8.8.201.199 21:42, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Just a tad ridiculous

No bumping and grinding at school dances? Recent valedictorians and their colleges of destination? Wikipedia isn't LiveJournal, MySpace, etc. These are useless pieces of information relevent only to alumni of one school. I'm pearing this article down.Killua 23:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

It looks like you used something closer to a meat cleaver than a pearing knife, but I, for one, will go along with it. Pzavon 01:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Reference

I'm going to need a better reference for Walnut Hill's claim to being one of the U.S.'s leading high schools than a link to WH's website. How about something a bit more impartial and more statistically related? As it is, there is no evidence presented to prove such a thing. Coming from the Cincinnati area, I know Walnut Hills is a great school, but I've always thought of St. Xavier as being better (it has more than twice the National Merit finalists.) Any hard data or newspaper articles? If not, I'm going to be deleting that comment. Killua 18:09, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

For hard data we probably need someone with access to the information resources used by high school councilors and college admissions offices. I know from personal experience that WHHS is known by name as a quality school by a good many of the people working admissions offices, but that is hardly published quantitative data. I don't know how to access aggregate test scores from SATs and the like. Care to count number of Natioanl Merit Scholars or AP test scores of 4 per capita? I do know that claims for this level of quality have been bandied about the Cincinnati school system for decades, and the fact that WHHS offers all available AP courses does seem to be a relevant fact for this question. Pzavon 02:21, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

On further reflection, at a basic level you are not required to accept it. That is a valid source reference. All readers are able to reach their own conclusions about the assertion made since the source reference is there for all to see.

Besides, an assertion that a specific school is "one of the U.S.' leading high schools" makes no claim whatsoever regarding the relative quality of any other high school. Xavier (in which city, by the way) may or may not be "better" than Walnut Hills, but either way that does not impact whether Walnut Hills is "among the leading high schools."

Your assertions do not support removing that comment.

Pzavon 11:49, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The kind of source reference they gave is not entirely valid. They link to a school's page that makes a claim. We can not tell if it is valid or invalid. Certainly on the Pepsi-cola page we cannot say it is the tastiest pop and then link to pepsi.com as a reference.

I have actually researched top public high schools in the U.S. and Walnut Hills was not in any top 100 lists, while several other Ohio (and southern Ohio) schools were mentioned, such as Madeira and Indian Hill. St. Xavier is a Cincinnati school that has the distinction of having the most national merit finalists of any Ohio school. I certainly realize that Walnut Hills is an excellent school (I took my SATs there) but if it does not appear on top 100 lists of public high schools, is it really one of the leading U.S. high schools? Perhaps there is data that supports their assertion, but I want to see it first. Killua 14:12, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Even though this debate is really old and probably no one cares, just for information later, on a lot of lists Walnut doesn't appear because it only accepts students who have passed their tests and therefore have above average intelligence. So often it isn't evaluated with more open schools, as its not really fair. But even 2006 I think it was Newsweek's 57th, and the top (public) school in Ohio. Millancad 05:14, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

If you had done your research better you would of found http://www.woi-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4838510 there is your "proof" ... Killua do you have something against Walnut Hills High School because is certainly seems so [24.165.112.173said this on 19 August 2006]

Perhaps you should look at the dates of the various comments. You (24.165.112.173) responded to a 5-month old message on a topic that had largely been dropped from discussion. Pzavon 02:44, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sports?

Please note the 6 May 2006 edit by 216.14.74.21 in which "soccer team" is replaced by "academic team." Can anyone who is closer to the current events there say whether this is a reasonable edit or vandalism? Pzavon 15:05, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say it was reasonable, considering that we (I'm one of the captains of that team) went undefeated in our conference and in fact went on to become first runner-up in the state championship. 8.8.201.199 00:15, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess the basic question is, in the realm of SPORTS (since that is the section title) is the academic team one of the most notable teams of the school, and should it replace a mention of the soccer team in a sports context? By the way, just what is an "academic team?" Forty years ago there was an "It's Academic Team" named for a TV quiz show in which teams from various schools competed in answering questions. Has that activity survived all this time, or is this something else? I would suggest that such an activity, while worthy of mention, is not a sport and ought to be addressed in a different section. Pzavon 02:29, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

I've never actually seen that show, but from what I've heard, it is fairly similar. The academic team is one of the school's most notable teams, and I believe it should remain in "sports" because it is treated the same way by the school as all the other athletic sports at Walnut Hills (e.g. see this. It lists quiz team events in the same way as those of any other competitive sport.) 8.8.201.199 21:24, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Excellent point, and I'll accept that as definitive of the team as a sports team. But I see they list it as "Varsity Quiz" Team while you call it the "Academic" team. What is the team's formal name? That is what should be used in this article.

Beyond that, when the Academic team was first (or perhaps only most recently) listed in the article as among the notable teams of the school, it was done by replacement, in place of mention of the soccer team. You are there now. Please advise whether you think the soccer team is also one of the notable teams, in which case perhaps it should be mentioned as well. Pzavon 16:39, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

It's called the quiz team, but the official rules refer to it as "academic team". For example, our format is called Ohio Academic Competition (the rules are here).

The soccer team did not do particularly well this year (they were considerably better last year), with 8 wins, 7 losses and one tie. The varsity volleyball team on the other hand did do quite well (19-2).

[edit] Alumni

Supposedly WHHS only refers to students who graduate as alumni. I've never attended WHHS (though I've been to academic team matches there), so I can't argue for that; however, I am a big fan of using more official definitions (see Merriam-Webster, Oxford, even the Wikipedia article) rather than a term that is misused (either ignorantly or deliberately).

Even if WHHS does use that term in that way, is that a valid reason to modify the wiki entry, since the accepted use of the word does NOT include that definition? I'm assuming this is because they don't want an inconvenient piece of trivia (Manson being an alumnus) to be bandied about. 74.129.17.185 01:54, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions often include uses that are not commonly or technically "accepted" depending on the dictionary and the definition. A common use of the word "alumnus" is to mean a graduate. Claiming this use to be "incorrect" or "invalid" is to ignore the effect of continued common usage on the evolution of language. Pzavon 19:00, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

You mean like "nookyooler" and "ain't?" Lots of things have become common usage, that doesn't mean that they should be accepted by the community. When was the last time you heard someone use "whom" properly? Does that mean we should remove "whom" from the language? Actually, . . . ;) Cgirten 02:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)