The James Logan Courier

By Musa Biawogi, Courier Staff Writer

Following the end of the first semester of the 2007-2008 school year, a lot of students are concerned about their grades, or, more precisely, what their parents will do when they see report cards.

Some students have found ways to keep their parents from seeing them, hoping that maybe if their parents don’t see their grades they would forget about them.

The most obvious way is to intercept the report card in the mail, before parents can get their hands on it. Intercepting report cards is a Logan tradition that has going on for many years, but it won't work much longer.

“I’ve never let my parents see my report card, if they do I'm screwed. My grades is all bad, fool” said one 12th grade student who asked not to be identified, for obvious reasons. He says that he gets home early from school to check the mail first before anybody on days when there is danger of report card delivery.

“Man, every weekend morning, if I know that our report cards are coming, I wake up because our mail comes very early, just to see if my grades arrived. One time I even asked the mailman if he could check if my report card is really in the mail,” the student said.

Another senior told The Courier that he intercepted his report card one. "I did badly in all my classes," he said, so he got the bad report card out of the mail and ditched it. He got away with it. "They didn't find out," he said. He's not afraid they will find out, either. "Good grades washed it away," he said.

If they had found out, they would have "taken away my computer, my TV, my good shoes. They'd take away all the stuff that I have fun with," he said, adding that he gets good grades now and wouldn't do it again."

Does he feel guilty? " Not really," he said.

A senior girl told The Courier that she pulls her report card out of the mail and puts it in a shoebox in her closet for safekeeping in case it's needed.

Another student said that, if his parents don't simply forget about the report card and ask about it, he blames it's absence on institutional incompetence at Logan. "They believe that," he said.

Another technique students 'fessed up to is having the report card sent to an alternate address.

One senior told The Courier that he has his report card sent to his grandmother's house, and that she simply throws it away. If he didn't and his parents found out about his bad grades, they "take my xBox away."

Another student said he has the card sent to an old address, where he assumes that the new residents simply throw it away.

A new computer program the New Haven Unified School District is bringing online soon will make it tougher to keep parents in the dark about grades. The new program, Zangle, will allow parents to access student grades online after the parent types in a certain code to make this happen.

That's not a popular development with the report card intercepters.

“See, why when students are having it their way the school comes and messes it up, why would they do that? I don’t want my parents to have to keep seeing my grades” said a James Logan Junior.

“Man, I'm going to miss intercepting my report cards, I feel bad for next year's kids cause I'm about to graduate anyways” said GbessayKai Massaquoi, a senior.