Photo courtesy of senior Lily Scurria.

  The San Luis Obispo High School Golden Tiger Awards are scheduled to be held online on May 26, 2022, and many students might not know what these awards even are. This is partly due to the fact that the awards have been held online going on three years, and partly because the Golden Tiger Awards are given to those who have had outstanding academic excellence or participation in a class, which means not everyone gets one. 

  “The Golden Tigers is an academic recognition to commend student performance in academics” said Associated Student Body director Jim Johnson. 

  The premise of the awards has always brought up feelings of discontent among some students due to the fact that the awards are so selective. Additionally, the selection process may not involve teachers considering student effort or perhaps academic barriers that were overcome. 

  “I think that the awards should be effort based, because not everyone learns in the same way. So if you’re trying your hardest and you’re just not getting that good of a grade, then I think you still deserve an award for the effort put in,” said junior Lily Duggan. 

  Deciding who gets an award is not an easy task. Currently, each teacher gets to select three people out of all of their students to receive a Golden Tiger. As far as the selection process goes, Johnson said that typically each department (for example the math department) gets together to decide the criteria for how to decide which of their math students to choose. 

  “I feel like it should be a combination of both effort and grades. Someone who could give school their best effort could be getting an average grade but there’s also some people that get really good grades but that’s not because they put in all the effort they could into it. So it really depends on the student” said freshman Kamaile Abac. 

  Overall, the Golden Tiger Awards are meant to celebrate students that a specific teacher believes had exceptional performance or participation in their class. Of course, each teacher has more than just three students who meet this criteria, however the Golden Tigers are still such an important recognition assembly. 

  “Athletes get recognized all the time. Everybody talks about athletics. I want to make sure that we celebrate and honor people who are achieving academically,” said Johnson. 

  Honoring students with recognition assemblies or awards is something that SLOHS has done for decades. Although it can seem as if the Golden Tiger Awards are not fair due to the fact that a student who puts their best effort into school might not receive an award, allowing students who excel academically a chance to receive acknowledgment of that is far more fair than not allowing the Golden Tigers to happen at all.