Day Creek Intermediate School has a lottery system to decide which GATE students get to participate in certain activities. Can students and parents be absolutely certain that the kids will be chosen fairly?The GATE activity lottery system has some positive points to it. In a way, it prepares students for the realization that life’s not always fair. But with a little luck, any one of us could participate in every activity.

Last year, things were different. Whoever first submitted a permission slip for an activity got to participate. There was a limit for the number of students, but the system seemed to be sensible. This method was changed because it was found to be unjust.

“We changed it because we were told by our district office that the lottery system was the legal way to handle it. It was actually not acceptable to do ‘first come, first serve’ because it doesn’t allow students that have busy parents and busy schedules or have a difficult time seeing mom and dad to get them to sign the slip. It doesn’t give them the opportunity to have a fair shot at getting into the class,” said Mr. Carson, the vice-principal.

At its best, this system is all about luck unless the office is choosing their favorite students. Any concern, no matter how dumb, could be fixed if the school office were willing to make one simple change to the lottery system.

An amusing solution would be to gather up all the GATE students and have a massive rock, paper, scissors tournament. That way, the GATE activity winners would be chosen right in front of our eyes. This wouldn’t change much of the outcome, as some students would continue to jump up in excitement while others would go home in tears. But this way would eliminate any suspicion of bias.

There is another option, although it is a little less entertaining. Why don’t we get a bingo cage filled with papers that have the names of all the GATE students written on them? This would display that the choices are truly random. If money is a problem, I’m sure we can hunt down an extra orange Home Depot umbrella bucket! As the process is out in the open, bucket or bingo-style, there would never be any concerns or questions.