I did not know how to feel about Blair Hornstine, a high school student in Moorestown, N.J., who successfully sued her school so she could be the only valedictorian.

School officials said the high school's second-ranked student, Kenneth Mirkin, had a lower average only because he had to take gym classes (which are given less weight than some academic classes) and Hornstine didn't because of a disability. So at first I thought it would be fair for her to share the honor with him. Anyway, what would she lose? Then again, I thought that if there's something wrong with the way grade point averages are calculated, shouldn't the rules be changed before they're broken?

But finally, it came to me what my opinion truly is.

I don't care.

I never have.

Why does anybody?

The designation of Moorestown High School's 2003 valedictorian is so not my problem that I can't even begin to describe how much my problem it isn't. I've got leaky pipes in my bathroom, I can't find a decent burrito out here and a guy in the street outside my window right now is yelling over and over that someone named Sarah stole his laundry. What difference will it make to any of that whether Moorestown High School graduates one valedictorian, two or 60?

Yet people have gotten insanely angry about this. I've read letters calling Hornstine a pariah. Some people are saying students should walk out when she speaks at graduation. Others have hurled eggs at her home. I don't think most of these angry people understand her story any more fully than I do. But they hate her – as if she represented an invasion of valedictorians, crashing into America's homes and forcing small children to listen to long speeches that don't seem to be about anything in particular.

I think people resent Hornstine not simply because she's kept someone else from being the valedictorian, but because her story gives us permission to hate a school's best student. And, let's face it, we do anyway. If Mirkin were better known, maybe people would hate him, too.

Over in Winston-Salem, N.C., for example, a Web page called Ryan Eanes online chronicles “Really, really real quotes from the inept valedictorian of the Class of 1999 from Statesville High School.” These are quoted by the salutatorian (so no, of course he's not bitter), and include numerous sexist remarks and such corkers as “You mean Ewoks are not real animals?”

In the meantime, in Hemet, Calif., school board members are thinking of eliminating the valedictorian honor altogether, according to Fox News. Students there are boosting their grade point average by taking easy electives. Parents are lobbying teachers for higher grades. People are seeking some kind of magic formula – right down to the forgettable valedictorian speech at graduation.

In fact, if you can't write your own forgettable valedictorian speech (you how it is: you focus so much on being a top student that you somehow don’t learn how to write), you can buy one at Speech-Writers.com – among “our ready-to-go, valedictorian speeches and poems suitable for use by a prize-winning student at a valedictory function,” the service advertises.

And all for what?

In a few months, everyone from Moorestown High School class of 2003 will have gone separate ways, and the question of who was or was not the valedictorian will be relegated to the same conversation as who did or did not throw up at the homecoming game. Hornstine will go to Harvard, as will Mirkin. Other students will go to a state college or join the Army or live in an apartment with 12 other people and start a laughably mediocre rock band. Maybe one of the kids headed for a state college will go on to law school. And maybe someday he'll square off against Hornstine in a courtroom after she's also become a lawyer, and maybe the state school graduate will win (particularly if Mirkin helps him).

Anyway, they'll both be all right. I fail to see what matters beyond that.