In its fourth year, Senior Destinations 2014, more commonly known as TJDestinations has run its course with many of this year’s seniors. With everyone knowing what school they will be attending in the fall, most people who will have added themselves to TJDestinations have done so.  However, many of the students have misused the website, treating it as a personal ego booster.

TJDestinations is a website that is designed and purposed to let seniors know where their classmates will be attending and to provide information to underclassmen regarding where students got accepted to or rejected from. To offer more information than Naviance, students can enter intended programs, grade point average (GPA), SAT scores, extracurricular activities and awards.

Theoretically, most of this information is not too secret. Some, not all, GPAs and test scores can be inferred by other students. So why, then does the system get so out of line?

First, far too many people use it for bragging rights, by putting up only acceptances, SAT, GPA or neither and beefing up or even making up activities and awards.  While the system allows for things like these to happen, they really should not have to.

By excluding flaws, people only hurt themselves. It can be assumed that an omission of rejections or any other section means that they are not as strong. So, people who are going to judge will judge regardless, and the majority of people won’t care.  There is nothing helped by the exclusion of key information for either the seniors or the underclassmen.

Additionally, the system points out an unethical action committed by many Jefferson students. It shows who applied binding early decision (ED) to schools, getting accepted and committing in December.  Many of these students also applied to the University of Virginia (U.Va.) early action, which does not come out until the end of January.  By leaving their U.Va. applications in place, these students are violating the ED contact and hurting their fellow classmates who also applied to U.Va.

If you’re going to use the system, make it useful.  Instead of making it a place to brag about how you think you are the best, have some humility and make TJDestinations a useful website.