File this under “some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.”
Three groups representing minority students, The Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England, and the Greater Boston Latino Network, have filed a lawsuit against Harvard University to end the practice of legacy and donor admissions, and what is really delicious is they are using the very language that the SCOTUS Majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice Roberts, used in their decision to strike down affirmative action:
“College admissions are zero-sum, and a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter.”
Quite right, Roberts, which is precisely the rigged game that affirmative action sought to remedy.
You are really not that bright, are you?
But I am going to go against my first instinct and assume for argument that you are not actually stupid as you sound using those words in your opinion.
In which case you are just a witting tool of of the white supremacists who bought your SCOTUS majority for you.
“Three minority advocacy groups are suing Harvard University’s governing body, accusing the school of discrimination by giving preferential treatment to children of wealthy donors and alumni, and are citing the recent US Supreme Court ruling that gutted affirmative action to bolster their lawsuit.
The lawsuit, filed by the Lawyers for Civil Rights group on behalf of the Chica Project, the African Community Economic Development of New England, and the Greater Boston Latino Network, alleges the students who receive that preferential treatment are “overwhelmingly White,” and make up as much as 15% of admitted students.
“This preferential treatment has nothing to do with an applicant’s merit. Instead, it is an unfair and unearned benefit that is conferred solely based on the family that the applicant is born into,” Lawyers for Civil Rights said in a news release. “This custom, pattern, and practice is exclusionary and discriminatory. It severely disadvantages and harms applicants of color.”
The lawsuit comes less than a week after the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in college admissions, ruling schools can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for accepting a candidate.
The lawsuit cited that ruling and quoted the Supreme Court’s majority, which said, “College admissions are zero-sum, and a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter.”
Those words should be tattooed on your forehead Roberts, so that going forward you will not forget them.
Any judge that reads those words and does not decide for the plaintiffs will prove himself as big a hypocrite as you and Alito and the rest of your kangaroo majority.
This was the first thing I thought of when I heard the s.c.’s asinine decision. Legacy admissions are bullshit. I hope the African American students realize HBCU’s also have legacy admissions so those too might be on the chopping block and need to be.
Yes, the doors to every college and university need to be open to everyone and if A.A. has been tossed then legacy admissions need to be removed. I’m surprised this hasn’t been attempted yet.
Probably hasn’t been pursued yet BECAUSE affirmative action was in place to attempt to balance it.
Not just the ones supported by Daddy Warbucks – why should anyone who has some skill in throwing a ball or running fast get accepted (unless they are learning to be Physical Education teachers/school coaches) with just a nod towards whatever academic qualification they may (or may not) have?
Colleges depend on Wells to-do alumni who.buy season tickets to football and basketball games,stay in local.motels, and eat at local restaurants and bars. It would devastate local.businesses if they banned athletic scholarships,so the Rs will.never allow it.
Personally, I think that if an athlete cannot meet the average academic scores,he or she shouldn’t. get accepted, let alone a scholarship.
Unless the policy has changed fairly recently I’m comfortable saying Harvard, like the other Ivy League schools does NOT offer athletic scholarships. Not even academic ones. Scholarships are offered on a financial needs basis to students who qualify for admission but can’t afford it and/or would incur debt that would haunt them for life. Now, there are elite private schools that are even serious athletic contenders in some sports that do in fact offfer athletic scholarships. I live in the Triangle of NC and Duke of course comes to mind. Stanford has competed at top levels at times in “minor” sports but have had football teams that challenged for the PAC 10 at times. USC, and Notre Dame also come to mind. Those are schools who I agree would have some mightily pi$$ed alumni if they stopped offering athletic scholarships and their sports programs suffered. But say what you will about the Ivy schools, they put sports in a more proper context. I think the University of Chicago stands alone in being a major and elite private university that at one time had a first rate football program. If you know college football the name Amos Alonzo Stagg should ring a bell. It was under the bleachers in a large enclosure at the field named for him that Fermi oversaw the first known nuclear chain reaction. But the school didn’t want to be known for football and sports. So it eliminated all of its inter-collegiate sports! My dad admired that school above all others. I had applied to a several elite schools including Harvard and it looked like I was headed for admission when my dad shot it down. And mentioned U-Chicago. The same thing happened when I was recruited to play basketball (where another guy from my hometown was playing) at a quite elite small private school, Knox College up in Galseburg, IL. I was accepted (no athlete got a break on academic requirements which were stringent) but like other such schools that dot the country they didn’t offer athletic scholarships. They did put together a nice financial aid package which covered much of the cost with grants and a stodent loan but in the 1975-76 school year tuition and room & board ran $6,500. Even with the financial aid it would have cost my dad for a single year what two years at nearby SIU-Carbondale would have cost if I lived at home. (Carbondale was only six miles away) So my dad vetoed that too.
However, the University of Chicago was THE school in his mind and he was disappointed I refused to consider it, even when he mentioned I could go to Wrigley Field and watch my beloved Cubs without having to put up with Cardinal fans up in St. Louis. Despite his lower middle class income (he never finished his engineering degree and did land acquistion for IDOT over in Carbondale) he’d have moved heaven and earth to pay my way to U-Chicago. At times in my life I’ve thought I should have listened to him on that.
Yes, but without legacies, we would never have had Animal House!