Grades. Tests. Homework. APs. College. The very utterance of these words quickens heartbeats and causes students to groan with anxiety, fatigue or dread. They are the reasons why many sacrifice their social lives and free time in exchange for hitting the books. Grades are curious things—they can cause nervous breakdowns or elation, but most of the time they simply cause stress. In Gunn’s highly academic climate, grades can be a sensitive topic and consequently should be kept as confidential as possible.

An example of the lack of grade privacy is posting grades in the classroom. When posted, the grades are sometimes left in alphabetical order, with student ID numbers or undercover code names replacing students’ names. Although this system makes grade updates accessible to students with less hassle for the teacher and students, if anyone tried hard or was intent enough, he or she could see what the grades of the people in his or her classroom are. For example, the grade of the unfortunate student with the last name that starts with a Z can be obvious to others if they simply looked at the last grade on the sheet, as with a student with a last name that starts with A. True, many students are unconcerned about how others are doing in the class, but there are consistently the few who invade their peers’ privacy.

A method that many teachers use is displaying grades on InClass. Posting grades online allows students to check their progress without hassling teachers. This is a much more secure and private way to ensure that grades have little chance of reaching classmates’ eyes. Some teachers may argue that posting grades online leads to frequent and sometimes obsessive checking of one’s grade, but moderation and self-control are virtues that students must learn on their own, just as they balance time spent with friends and time spent on homework or Facebook. Students should not be able to know of others’ grades, at least without their consent.

Some may argue that posting grades on the wall lets students see how others are doing to gauge their own performance. For one, teachers can easily show the scores’ mean, median and so on in class or online. In this manner, privacy will be maintained because the statistics are not student-specific. Also, these statistics, despite all the fuss, are inconsequential. In the big picture, what other people get in the class shouldn’t matter—it should be your performance that matters.

People also need to learn to respect other students’ grade privacy and keep what they hear to themselves. It’s not uncommon to hear people talking about who got what on a test. But problems are also evident in the reverse. Some people flaunt their grades, causing others to feel less-than-spectacular if they scored lower on a given assignment or test. The spread of who got what through word of mouth only exacerbates the grade-related stress that students undergo.

Posting grades for everyone to see exposes students’ personal information. Also, on the student word-of-mouth level, impinging on others’ privacy and knowing information irrelevant to oneself isn’t worth the effort. It, in fact, is a waste of energy and only makes the academic climate more competitive and stressful for everyone. Immediate measures should thereby be taken to maximize privacy.