The recent flapdoodle has reminded me of a very strange incident my freshman year. That was a while ago, okay? They had us show up a few days before the start of classes for orientation -- you know, which way is south, don't climb the water tower (which we wouldn't have thought of doing if they hadn't told us not to), meet with your advisor, have the athletic department determine if you were worthy of their interest, all that sort of thing.
They also tried to engineer ways of getting acquainted with your fellow students. One of these was folk dancing, which definitely did not interest me but for lack of anything better to do I stopped by to watch. It was in the field house, so I was leaning against the rail gawking at the bizarre spectacle of preppies from New Jersey learning how to do-si-do. The guy standing next to me was wearing sandles, cut off shorts and a tie-died t-shirt but he didn't have the long hair that normally would have gone with it in those days. I tried talking with him. He was quite aloof, didn't seem interested in striking up an acquaintance. He looked a bit older than a freshman so I asked him about that. He said he'd been in the army but he didn't want to talk about it. That was understandable, the Vietnam war was going on.
Anyway our paths didn't really cross after that, but people told me about this guy in their classes who seemed to have taken the course before. He went on about the pre-Raphaelites in the first class of a Victorian literature course, talked about the history of political development in Venezuela in the first week of poli-sci 101. All in all he was exceedingly obnoxious.
Six weeks or so into the semester the grapevine informed me that he had not, in fact, been in the army. He had spent the previous four years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending the World's Greatest University, from which he had in fact graduated. He had somehow ginned up a fake application to a small liberal arts college in the Philadelphia suburbs, gotten admitted, and there he was. I don't know how they caught him but I do know that the deans waxed mightily wroth.
As for how he managed to do this, obviously his SAT scores would still be good. However, it would seem difficult for him to get letters of recommendation from high school teachers since presumably they would have known he was admitted to Harvard. Maybe he could get away with telling them he had decided not to attend after all but wanted to go to college now, and they wouldn't have any way of knowing. It seems odd, however, that the admissions office didn't want to see his letter of discharge or get a recommendation from a commanding officer. In any case, this was a very expensive stunt. He must have been a rich kid.
As for why he did it, it seems he told the deans he was planning to write a book. I have a hard time imagining what he had in mind. "I scammed the admissions office and became a college freshman for the second time even though I had already graduated, and I was an obnoxious know-it-all in class. I'm sure you will find this story very fascinating." I don't know if they sued him or tried to have him prosecuted. I think they didn't want to generate any publicity about this, so maybe not. Anyway maybe I'll turn it into a novel some day.
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Write the story!
For your review...
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/18/opinions/trump-executive-order-campus-free-speech-nossel-friedman/index.html
Above is off topic but I don't mind if people want to read it. This is a rather complicated problem which I may address at some point.
On the College Admission Scandal Issue:
When people feel that students didn't get in by merit, either academically or sports, they will always be fighting the stigma. Did they deserve their place and the leg up that it gave them in life?
The social justice warriors instruct us not to care about Affirmative Action. Many high-profile blacks tell us that people actually DO care. It still dogs them to this day.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/03/affirmative-action-varsity-blues-black-experience-elite-universities.html
I think the takeaway is that you can't consider race in considering your worthiness for these slots and then expect the public not to do the same.
I was considering the spam hammer for the above because of the idiotic "social justice warriors" language. If I see that again, it will not get through. That said, obviously people in minority groups who are in selective universities experience people who think they're only their because they got special preference. But that doesn't make it true. The conclusion you seem to be drawing is that black people shouldn't be allowed to go to college because they will be seen as not being their legitimately. In other words that racism should be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Otherwise, I don't know what your point is. You don't seem to have read the interview you link to.
I'm simply stating the obvious.
When preferential consideration exists, whether it's legacy or cheating or race, people will always question your worthiness, simply because these avenues exist.
I think the interviewees of this article make my case for me.
Well yes, people will have that perception, although it's not clear that race really is a "preferential condition." The way it works is more subtle. Colleges try to develop admissions criteria that don't result in a very low proportion of minority students. At the same time they continue to give preference to legacies, donors and rowers. That said, the question of what's "fair" is certainly disputable and doesn't have any definite answer. People will disagree.
Imagine a world without hypothetical scenarios.
Colleges try to develop admissions criteria that don't result in a very low proportion of minority students.
Of course, it's a workaround. You're keeping the end goal in mind while you develop criteria that will achieve that goal without explicitly and overtly using race.
The goal is the same. The end result is the same.
And, yes, people will always disagree on what "fair" is, just like "justice" or any other concept that is determined by one's worldview.
"Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex."
--Frank Zappa
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