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An 18-year-old honor student whose grade point average actually exceeds 4.0 is seeing his dreams of becoming valedictorian crushes because of a policy his school has yet to actually prove exists.

Ladarius Sapho managed to accumulate a 4.135 GPA during his three years at an Maywood, IL high school but he’s being told that isn’t good enough because he didn’t attend the school for seven semesters.

Ditto goes for the salutatorian.

Reports MyFoxChicago:

“I was gonna be number one, valedictorian of 2014. I was going to be giving the speech at graduation,” said Sapho.

However, last week, both Sapho and the school’s number two student, the salutatorian, got called to the office for some bad news.

Principal Tony Valente told them they didn’t qualify for the honors, because both students started at the school as sophomores after moving into the district. Policy requires they must have attended for at least seven semesters to get the titles.

A district spokesman told FOX 32 the policy is on the district’s website, but we couldn’t find it either.

With graduation scheduled for Saturday, Sapho said he won’t give up.

Community advocate Antoinette Gray says that Principal Valente is using his own discretion to keep Sapho from obtaining the honor.

The school offered to give Sapho co-valedictorian credit without any official recognition but he flatly refused. After all, his future will be relatively bright.

He accepted a full-ride scholarship to a Hawaiian college to become a neurosurgeon.

View pictures of the ordeal in the gallery below.

Photos: MyFoxChicago

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