Ohio State’s new policy on awarding cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude honors to students with a 3.5, 3.7 and 3.9 Grade Point Average cheapens the honor. Doing this is not in the university’s best interest as it strives to be a more academic institution because it lessens the quality of the titles.If you give honors to more people, it removes the honor and there is no recognition or distinction. While establishing GPA as the deciding factor in receiving honors does set a uniform standard, it will also undoubtedly increase the number of graduates with honors, thus diminishing the honor.The same can be said for joining an honorary society. By not being selective in choosing members, the honor of being chosen is less.Now that Ohio State has switched to selective admission at the Columbus campus year round, OSU will continue to admit more and more brighter students capable of achieving an established grade point, increasing the number who graduate with Latin honors. Staying with the old system where the top 3 percent were awarded summa cum laude, next 3 percent magna cum laude and the next 4 percent cum laude would keep the honors only for the top 10 percent of each class. The new system allows students in every program to receive equal awards no matter how easy it is to achieve that grade point.Simply put, the benefit of the change to the Latin honors is consistency; the weakness of the change is the cheapening of the cum laude degrees.Twenty percent of incoming freshman are members of the OSU honors program. These students have shown among other things, their ability in the classroom to achieve certain grades. What will be the honor if those 20 percent succeed in achieving cum laude honors at OSU considering that 50 percent of their incoming class will not graduate with them as the current OSU attrition rate shows? This would leave only 30 percent of each incoming class graduating from OSU without honors.While working hard and earning a high GPA does show hard work and may merit some recongition; awarding it a cum laude degree fails by not giving extremely high recognition to those who have excelled in their studies beyond simply aiming for and achieving a minimum grade point.A college degree is an award for hard work that must be earned over time. Those who feel they are not being recognized by not having a cum laude or an honors diploma should recognize the diploma is their award for their college experience. That is their award for the hard work. If OSU gives each person the diploma cum laude, it takes the “with honors” out of it.