God save the queen

Burying homecoming crown won’t chasten bullies

Last school year, a young woman at a Michigan high school was nominated for homecoming queen, against her will and without her permission.

It was, to the people who nominated her, a funny joke, for she was not the homecoming queen “type.”

It wasn’t a joke, of course, but an act of teenage mob cruelty.

So what was the school’s response then and what is it now ? Wimpery. It was not to chastise the bullies or reverse the act of cruelty then. And, now, with the consent and endorsement of its student council, it is to abolish the homecoming queen.

Instead, Chelsea High School, in Chelsea, Mich. will bestow an “excellence award” that, we are assured, will not be associated with being “pretty” or “popular.”

So, the bullies win and a tradition dies.

Bullying hurts. And there is a lot of it in junior high and high school.

Excellence certainly deserves a reward at any and all times in public schools.

But homecoming has nothing to do with academic excellence. And bullies need to be stood up to, especially in schools — by both school administrators (who need some fortitude) and students (who need to grow strong).

Burying the homecoming crown won’t chasten the bullies at Chelsea High. It will only further empower them.

The school principal should have overruled the misuse of the crown by a nasty mob. And the school should uphold a tradition, maybe not a noble one but a nice one, by keeping the homecoming queen.