Rules are meant to be broken

A buddy of mine once told me the story about how he had spent his entire senior year of high school getting ready to apply to West Point. He had jumped through all the hoops and been accepted; all that was left was for him to complete the acceptance packet, which he did the day he received it. He mailed it out and started waiting.\nAfter a few months passed without any word, he got worried. He started calling -- he had a delivery confirmation slip for his paperwork, but no one at the office knew anything. The paperwork had been misplaced, it seemed. No problem -- except it was past due. Surely they would make an exception, right?\nWrong. As my friend found out, one of the worst feelings is when you find yourself needing an exception and facing hardheaded, inconsiderate people. It's downright infuriating, and believe it or not, a similar situation is going on in Mitchell, Ind. right now.\nA Polish high school senior named Filip Lempa is currently attending Mitchell High School via a Rotary Scholarship. Lempa had been told before leaving Poland that he might be able to receive an American high school diploma -- it had been done elsewhere in the past -- and so he paid for a court-approved translation of his Polish transcripts.\nHowever, upon arriving, Lempa was originally prohibited from taking Indiana's Graduation Qualifying Exam (what most sophomores take in the form of ISTEP+). Were he to fail, Principal Steve Phillips cautioned, he might lower the school's average and reduce the amount of federal funding they received.\nAfter receiving a 4.0 for the fall semester, Lempa was finally allowed to take the exam and, not surprisingly, he passed. Considering that in 2005, 36 percent of Indiana sophomores failed the math portion and 32 percent failed language arts, that's something of a feat. To the principal, however, it was just a diagnostic -- Lempa still wasn't eligible for a diploma.\nPhilips is the final authority on whether or not Lempa can graduate, and he says no. Lempa hasn't officially followed the Core 40 track. Never mind the fact that he's taken comparable courses (including six years of English), nor the fact that if he doesn't receive a diploma, the 19-year-old senior will have to complete another year of high school in Poland before he can attend college.\nSo, what can we piece together? He's effectively completed the requirements. He's passed a test one-third of Indiana natives can't pass. He's facing a lot of frustration and wasted time if he doesn't graduate, all for the perceived sanctity of a Core 40 diploma and one man's slavish devotion to arbitrary rules. It's a complete non-issue made into a huge issue, and it has far-reaching \nimplications.\nIf you want to help, you can always call Governor Daniels and ask him to try and reason with Phillips -- the number is 317-232-4567. Anyway, remember my friend? Well, he graduated from IU and went ROTC, but he always said the letdown of West Point was the biggest disappointment of his life. If someone had been willing to use their eyes, heart and brain, he might not have been the victim of unreasonable \ncircumstances. \nSounds familiar, doesn't it?