Student Was About To Be Awarded Valedictorian, But Her Rival’s Mother Pulled Some Last Minute Strings. So She Made Sure They Would Both Regret Cheating.

Michael Levanduski

3 weeks ago

Source: Shutterstock/Reddit

Competition is a great way to motivate some people to work hard and do their best.

What would you do if there was a competition in school, and rather than being fair, your competition’s mother was also the teacher?

That is what happened to the young lady in this story, but she found a way to get some epic revenge on everyone.

You’re gonna love this one.

Nepotism: Marked for deletion.

My school had a tradition, and I’m not sure if it’s odd or not.

But, each year we had kind of a mini-valedictorian award, starting in middle school.

I was in the gifted program, so several of us had 4.0’s, so the award was given to whoever had the highest overall GPA on the 100 point scale.

I have always been very competitive by nature, so I set my sights on winning this award in the 7th grade.

However, there was a bit of competition: let’s call him Todd.

Todd had really good grades as well, with the top spot usually bouncing back and forth between the two of us.

It was so close that every single quiz, exam, and homework assignment had the potential to dethrone one of us while lifting the other.

I had an average of 98.somthing, as did he.

Todd had a bit of an edge, however.

See, Todd’s mom was known for being a bully.

She would yell, scream, berate, and openly mock any teacher who dared to give Todd a lower grade than me.

But that isn’t all: Todd’s mom was also a teacher at our school.

She would openly defy and berate her own colleagues, should they not provide whatever grade she wanted for Todd.

Now, usually the school would avoid giving a child a class with their mother, but sometimes this was unavoidable.

It works out that way sometimes.

Naturally, we ended up in a class with his mother as the teacher.

This was a world history class, one which required several papers, tests, etc.

By the end of the year, Todd and I had been neck and neck in this class.

But, I noticed something: I consistently outperformed Todd (by several points) on any objective learning assessments (fill in the blank tests, multiple choice, etc.)

However, somehow Todd consistently outperformed me on written/subjective learning assessments (papers, essays, etc.)

Being a young and ignorant kid, I just assumed he was better at writing.

That is, until our final assignment rolled around.

All our tests had been taken, all our quizzes and homework assignments graded, all our papers submitted and graded, the semester was functionally complete.

I held a fraction of a point over Todd in the class, which put me overall ahead in the valedictorian race.

But, mommy dearest couldn’t have that.

So, with three days left of the year, she assigned a list minute 2 page paper.

Short, and simple.

I submitted mine, and received a 95.

Fair enough.

Gee, I wonder how that happened.

I found out that Todd got a 100, just enough to put him ahead of me in the class, and in the valedictorian race.

I was frustrated, so I asked Todd to see his paper repeatedly, desperate to find ways to improve to better my chances the next year.

He refused, again and again.

Then I remembered: when his mom handed the papers back to us, she never gave one to Todd.

He hadn’t done the paper, it was purely an assignment contrived to put him ahead.

Now comes the revenge: our school had just transferred to a paperless gradebook system the year before, so this was the second year on it.

The principal was determined to make this cost efficient, so after the first trial year he didn’t even bother restocking the teachers with physical grade books.

That way, he could add the amount saved from physical books to the total amount that the new paperless system was saving the school.

Now, during this time I also worked.

Quite a job for a 7th grader.

I had a family member who owned a small local ISP, and I would help out at every opportunity.

I loved computers, and still do.

Now, working with this family member equipped me with much more networking knowledge than other kids my age, and even most adults.

I decided that with this power came great responsibility: I was going to right this grievous injustice.

So, I started digging.

I got on a school PC and started going through the network.

Turns out, the school had wanted to save as much money as possible while going paperless.

So, they didn’t hire a professional technician, consultant, or anything.

One of the dads just volunteered, in exchanged for a reduced tuition charge (private school.)

So, this system was just a nightmare.

There was no dedicated network for sharing grades, there was no password protection on any files, there were no administrative restrictions on any files, nothing.

What he did was just “share” a single directory on the headmaster’s computer.

That directory held the entire gradebook for each and every class of each and every grade: kindergarten through 12th grade.

I thought this was too good to be true, surely there was a back up somewhere.

So, I went to the school’s port switcher, which was just in an unlocked closet.

I checked around, expecting to see a server, or a set of drives set to automatically back up whatever is shared on the network.

Nada.

Now, I was in a rage.

I had gone to the principal several times, pointing out that Todd’s mom was abusing her position, she was bullying teachers to give her kid an edge.

Her son would even brag about how he could get away with not doing homework in other classes, because mommy would make sure nothing came of it.

But, the principal had failed to act.

He had declared that each teacher was sovereign in their classrooms, so long as nothing illegal happened he would not intervene.

He was a very unprincipled principal.

So, I made a decision: to delete the nepotism.

I couldn’t just change my grades in her class, she monitored my average like a hawk.

So, I went nuclear.

I went into that subdirectory, and deleted every single file in it.

But, the principal had shared his whole users/desktop directory.

So, I emptied the recycling.

I completely wiped every trace of grading software on that computer, because the idiot didn’t even put a password on the computer.

So, from the desktop subdirectory I was able to access everything.

This was in the very last couple of days of school.

There were no hard copies (gradebooks), there were no backups, there was nothing remaining to even prove that the school year ever occurred.

I’m surprised he would admit this to the students.

On the final day of school, we get called into an assembly.

The principal is visibly disheveled, shaken, and upset.

Not even angry, just broken.

He announced that the entire year of grades were totally lost.

The school didn’t know what to do, because there were no hard copies.

They couldn’t recover the data, because they cheaped out and didn’t purchase a backup system.

All they could do was reinstall the software.

But, on grading software if there is no grade to input, then what does it default to when showing the grades of the students?

A 100%.

Every single student in that school got valedictorian of their class that year: 100% all around.

Heck, even a few kids got enough of a boost from that final year that they got to graduate on time instead of being held back.

Wow, he lost his job over this.

Next year, we had a new principal.

I was held slightly suspect since everyone knew of my tech background, but nobody could prove anything.

Even the PC’s in the computer lab didn’t have usernames or passwords, so there was no way to link me to anything.

That following year, security cameras and passwords were put in the computer lab.

That is crazy that they would leave the system so vulnerable.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say.

What was the school thinking?