Dean Sorum added that people may have been thinking about honors in the wrong way. Honors is how well one does in school work. That is all it is. It is not a statement about the person. This is simply what grades does a student get.
Personal issues are irrelevant.
For this reason the college-wide standard should be lower, at 3.0, to allow individual departments to honor the students they would like to honor. Some people are now saying that this is not the college's business. Dean Sorum responded that the college said this at least twenty-five years ago. But there is a logic to it. It would be embarrassing to have one get honors in classics with a 2.3 and not in another department.