I’ve seen the esteem of all the NESCAC schools rise since my graduation, much to my satisfaction, and I’ll leave it at that. I graduated 14 years ago, which was long enough to put me out of touch, but I have a couple relatives who are old enough to be thinking about these things presently, and it still seems like the Ivies are the true insanity-inducers. I guess I’m just a little taken-aback the insanity isn’t limited to them.
I can agree that affirmative action for gays is bullshit but why do people continue to think that we have put racism behind us. Racism was going strong until at least 1965 and while we don’t hang the nigger from the tree anymore, most baby boomers grew up in fairly racist households and many people today have to make a conscious effort to suppress racist inclinations. Not everyone succeeds. Much of the poverty and attitude we see (particularly in the black community) is the cultural result of centuries of slavery followed by a century of segregation and overt discrimination.
there are two ways of thinking about AA, you can say “We will now let you play in the game but you are going to have to start at the bottom and work your way up. There may be all sorts of historical factors you have to overcome as well as latent and structural racism but we will now eliminate any impenetrable barriers that have existed to yor success and progress, the best of you will be able to succeed and in a few generations you will have made up much of that lost ground”
Or you can say "We will now let you play in the game and in light of our 500 year head start and the continued racism that exists in society today, we think levelling the playing field means that we have to affirmatively provide and encourage the opportunities that will allow you to catch up in a reasonable period of time and will eliminaate some of the structural remnants of racism.
A lot of people think it is enough to say we won’t put roadblocks in your way, I think that we have to do more than stop beating them anytime they try to move forward.
I think this is a great idea. Gays and lesbians are really underrepresented in the college communi–
Hmm.
Wait. Why is this a good idea again? I thought the point of affirmative action programs was to enhance the diversity of the campus. In my experience (admittedly limited to Evergreen and UNCA, two pretty freakin’ liberal campuses) (campi?), non-straights were overrepresented compared to the population at large, not underrepresented.
There may be other good justifications for this rule: for example, if there are studies showing that the emotional strains of being a gay adolescent negatively impact a kid’s academic performance in high school and that this impact is fleeting, not lasting through the college years, I can see where this would be a smart move. However, on its face, it looks silly.
Not as silly, of course, as they hyperbolic conclusions drawn by the OP–but then, that’s setting the bar very high.
Daniel
“I’m not gay, but I’m willing to learn.”
Hmmm…this is interesting. Let me see if I can organize and share my thoughts in a coherent manner.
Firstly, I often find myself wondering just what, exactly, is meant by “affirmative action,” both in meaning and in practice. I mean, is it a quota system (we have to have “x” amount of this, “x” amount of that, etc.)? If so, I’ll admit that that makes me uncomfortable, but it miiiight * serve some purpose. If, OTOH, it’s just one of those "let’s give them just a little more consideration with the aim of diversifying the class/workforce/whatever, then I can’t get all worked up about it. (BTW, so the fuck what if schools and corporations want to diversify their bodies? It’s not like people are going to die if they have to go to school/work with people who are different from them in terms of ethnicity and sexual orientation. And true, it might not amount to a hill of beans in terms of people’s personal lives (though I wish it would, for the better), but that’s why it’s called a personal life–you get to be as racist and homophobic and anti-whateverelse on your own time.) And I think it would be helpful if, when people say that they’re either for or against affirmative action, they’d say what they think it is. I say this because I suspect that affirmative action doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone.
That being said, while I’m somewhat wary, I don’t know if I’m ready to call bullshit on the plan mentioned in the OP. I’m a 36-year-old gay man, and coming to terms with my sexuality (to say nothing of coming out) was extraordinarily painful and difficult for me. And while I am led to understand that coming out today is easier than it was back then, and that some cultural attitudes WRT homosexuality have been relaxed, I do know that it’s not all that easy today across the board. We don’t need to look far and wide to see that this is true, right? So, yeah, I don’t know. Like MsRobyn, though, I also wonder how long it’ll take for ever-burdened white folks (yep, 'cause nobody knows the troubles they’ve seen!), to take advantage of this by claiming to be gay when they, in fact, are not. True, it might indeed sound far-fetched, but I don’t know that I don’t see something like this happening.
As for **col_10022’s ** remarks: I’m also a black guy, and while I, like all of the black people in my circle, would loathe to be granted a job or admitted into college based *solely * on the color of my skin, I also know that I have been denied jobs and (I strongly suspect) housing and have most indubitably been harrassed by cops for that very reason, so I tend to be a supporter of affirmative action. (And my habitus, BTW, tends clearly towards middle-class, so, in my experience, it hasn’t been a ghetto/not ghetto thing.)
And yeah, if folks would just let me play the game and not let their racism get in my fucking way, then we’d be okay, and we’d never have to have a conversation about affirmative action. The thing is, though, as col_10022 pointed out, I just don’t trust most white folks (who still control much of what goes in America) to get out of my way,* so affirmative action, in some form, it has to be.
I don’t know if I’ve been coherent here, but that’s my two cents.
Oh, and Bryan Ekers? Give us a pick, woncha? If you’re willing to learn, I might be willing to teach. 
*And any white person out there who really knows other white people and how many of the seemingly “normal” ones really think WRT race can’t convince me that my feelings aren’t grounded in reality.
I don’t doubt what you say, but would you really claim that the difficulty of coming to terms with your sexuality negatively affected your academic performance to the point where apparently-cleverer people should be rejected from a University in favour of you? Affirmative Action is supposed to be about redressing the balance after discrimination, not about showing favouritism to people who’ve had a hard personal life. For example, should we also be favouring students whose parents divorced while they were growing up, or have suffered similar trauma?
Undoubtedly there is still prejudice against gays, but unless it can be demonstrated that this manifests itself as bias in university admissions, then AA is not the way to redress it. It’s not obvious to me that there’s any way to tell in an application form or at interview whether a candidate is gay (hence the skepticism regarding the practicality of this proposal), so I hardly think we can just assume that gays have been discriminated against in this area.
Not anymore, and especially not in educational institutions. Read the court’s opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger.
Hmm, interesting. But that would surely still require demonstrating that gays are underrepresented at university level, be it by discrimination or otherwise, and this seems far from obvious. Unless “diverse” now entails having a population out of proportion with the general population, that is. Perhaps we should start shipping in Guatemalans. Really stupid ones.
While it’s true that the decision you cite does offer diversity as a lawful and reasonable goal for affirmative action, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all affirmative action policies are driven by the desire for a diverse student body.
It could be that there are still plenty of affirmative action programs, inside and outside of education, where redressing the balance of historical or current discrimination is still a priority. Whether the discrimination is actually still a problem is something that people can argue about, but i know quite a few who agree with Dead Badger, that the prime goal of affirmative action is (or should be) to counterbalance discrimination.
Well, that wasn’t what I was directly claiming in my previous post (I apologize if I wasn’t clear in this regard), but now that you ask…yes, in my case, absolutely.
I went to college 18 years ago right after high school, and by all indications (always carried an “A” average), I should’ve done well. Unfortunately, during this time, I was forced, after years of denying what I knew to be true, to confront my homosexuality, not just socially, but particularly in the context of the religious beliefs that my conservative Southern family had relentlessly drilled into me (beliefs which I’ve long, thank Og, since scuttled), and instead of being able to concentrate on schoolwork, I sank rapidly into suicidal depression, something that caused a concerned friend (for whom I’ll remain unendingly grateful) to take me to the school psychologist, and which culminated in my having to leave college before I’d completed even my first year. My GPA at the time? 0.0. Yep, that’s zero-point-zero.
Granted, it’s easier today for gay youngsters to come out, but as I’ve said, that’s not true for each individual. In fact, I am certain that, despite the fact that I’m out to my family (for the most part, they don’t like it, but I’ve let them know that they can just go and fuck themselves) a teenager in my family who is also gay would have just as difficult a time in coming out. And so it is with many other gay and lesbian youths.
And yes, it is definitely possible–no, scratch that–*it has indeed happened * that gay and lesbian young people have experienced enough harrassment from their junior high and senior high classmates to make their lives a living hell and to negatively affect their academic performance. (Sorry, I don’t have time right now to look up cites, but it’s not difficult to find stories like this in the gay press.) I mean, really, if you’re wondering every day how many times you’re going to be terrorized, either verbally or physically, and you know (or you believe, and often with good reason) that no one–not your parents, not the school administrators, not the teachers, not other students–is going to help you, and you’re reminded by not only your enemies, but also your so-called friends (and I’m talking about you, Bill Clinton, et al.) that you’re a second-class citizen, how the hell can you concentrate on anything else? (I was in so much denial that I was able to perform well in high school, but as I said, the dam did eventually break.)
So, yeah, I can definitely see how gay and lesbian young people wouldn’t be able to perform up to academic standards due to the heterosexism/homophobia that many of them still have to contend with on a daily basis.
And I think you’re right in that affirmative action shouldn’t be used as a means of addressing applicants’ difficult personal lives, because people experience bad shit for all kinds of reasons. But affirmative action, AFAIK, isn’t necessarily used to address shit that happens on a micro level, but on a macro level. I don’t know if homophobia manifests itself in university admissions (and wasn’t claiming as much), but I don’t think that this particular manifestation was the point of the OP anyway, right? IOW, I didn’t get the sense from the OP that the university in question took the step it did because gays were being discriminated against in admissions, but because homophobia might have negatively affected applicants’ pre-collegiate academic performance, and that this occurs on a macro level instead of being limited to just a few individuals.
Anyway, I hope this helps explain my position.
I don’t agree with that decision, just pointing out what it said. And I agree that I’d be surprsied if gays were underrepresented at liberal arts colleges.
Oh, I know you don’t; I was just thinking aloud. Truthfully, about half the threads around here I think about commenting in, I go in and find you’ve already said more or less what I would’ve said. Which just proves that you’ve got far too much time on your hands and should leave some of the easy pickings for us lazy folk 
L’il Pluck, it’s 2am here and I was at the office 'til 11.30 on a bleeding Saturday night, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I reply to your interesting post tomorrow.
Preview: Holy crap! It’s 1am again! Goddamn daylight saving!
I would disagree, based on my own (anecdotal) experiences.
For several years, I served on a selection committee for a couple dozen scholarships offered to Minnesota GLBT or Friends students. From seeing their academic transcripts, it was clear that many of the applicants were high-grade students until about the age where they came out, and then their academic grades took a precipitous drop. From reading their essays, this drop was indeed related to their coming out; either mental anguish about their sexuality distracting them from schoolwork, or in-school harassment so bad that they lost interest and often began skipping classes frequently. It was often mentioned in their recommendation letters, also – references to how well they had withstood up ‘pressure’ or ‘troubles’ at school.
This pattern was so common it soon became obvious to all of the reviewers. Because of this, it was even included in the specifications that academic achievement was NOT a primary criterion in selecting the winners.
I have a question for Li’l Pluck. Please take this in the spirit in which it’s intended.
How would you address the issue of possible abuse of this new “preference” by non-GLBT students looking for any advantage?
Robin
No, it’s just another example of how affirmative action is just another word for discrimination, no matter which way it is applied.
Could this be a case of location, location, location. Is it easier for Gay students to come out in the NY Metro area then Minnesota maybe? I won’t claim to hang out with a lot of gay people, but on the other hand, by BIL and his friends are well educated. One of my best friends from HS did great academically and my more casual acquaintances all seem to do above average. But this is localized to this area of the country. I have to defer to your experience as mine is a small sampling of personal experience and yours is job related in field. I just want to explore the possibility that maybe it is easier in my location. BTW, I believe **Athelas ** is going to school in Princeton. So his experience is possibly similar to mine.
Jim
I had two friends come out before I graduated. I actually wound up becoming the Token Straight Guy often durinng the GLB club meetings at school my Sr. year, I think because my g.f. and I were so astonished by one of our friend’s being gay we had to get to the bottom of it somehow. Chicks just loved him too much! I mean, the irony!
One of those friends (the one who probably broke a hundred female hearts the day he came out) totally flourished. He always was self-confident and charismatic, but all his positive attributes just multiplied once he got a boyfriend and gave up the straight act.
The other friend’s experience was almost the opposite. She had a very religious family, who were devastated, and very homophobic high school friends who she lost almost the minute she exited the closet. She went the total bull-dyke fashion route abrubtly, grew angry and confrontational, and deeply depressed. I think her in-your-face radical-lesbian schtick was an obvious defensive reaction to near instant alienation from her past, but the effect was to also alienate many of the friends she had in college, both gay and straight, who couldn’t take her incessant ranting in social situations, interspersed with bouts of drunken sobbing among smaller gatherings of confidants. It was a tragic thing to watch this academically-excellent swimming champ turn into a binge-drinking basket case. My guess is if she came out in high school, not only would she not have gotten into the college she did, she might have either accidentally or deliberately killed herself before she got accepted anywhere.
So how do I characterize the youthful gay experience in the context of affirmative action? If I take the example of one friend, the good life began when he came out. The other, pure Hell. If most wound up like the former, I’d say it doesn’t make sense. If the experience is closer to that of the latter, though, I’d support at least some kind of compensatory mechanism, to make sure bright kids who society has treated most unjustly don’t have those injustices compounded at the collegiate level.
“In the spirit in which it’s intended”? Daaaaamn, you think I’m gonna pick a fight with you?!
And, further damn, you’re the first one who mentioned this possibility, and you’re asking *me * for an answer? I do declare, the temerity!
Well, the short answer is, I don’t know. I mean, despite the, uh, interesting advice offered by Snooooopy, it’s not really something that you can test for. Well, not ethically and legally, I don’t think.
I will repeat what I said (and, to some degree, alluded to) in my previous posts, though, and that is this: Though I do think it’s easier, in 2006, for gay teenagers to come out/come to terms with their sexuality, and while in some ways homosexuality is the new “black” (and I’m not just speaking fashion-wise, BTW), I think that, for the most part, there’s still enough of a stigma attached to being gay, especially outside of large metropolitan areas like NYC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, etc., that those who might be tempted to engage in such deception for the sake of a leg up might be dissuaded from doing so.
And where stigma fails? Well, I suppose that one could witch-hunt them in an attempt to find out what campus clubs they belong to, who they hang out with, who they’re fucking, etc., but again, that would likely be unethical and illegal (if they’re under 18, and maybe if they’re older), to say nothing of time-consuming and potentially creepy. Now, if one has evidence to suggest that a prospective student is lying/an already-admitted student has lied, then I suppose there would have to be some kind of investigation to determine what, exactly, is what. But what that would look like, I don’t know.
What it boils down to for me, then, is that you’d just have to trust that a student who identifies as gay and gets something of a leg up because of that is, much more often than not, telling the truth.
As an aside…
**Dead Badger ** thinks my post is interesting? Wow, I’m definitely walking on sunshine now! No, really, thanks, and I’ll await your post.
And, What Exit?? I can’t answer for t-bonham, but I do believe that location has a great deal to do with the ease of coming out. It should be noted, however, that no matter where one is, teenagers (hell, people, period!) can be so cruel that they’ll latch onto any kind of difference and use it to harrass someone. Obviously, the degree to which this happens can depend on where one is, but being in the NY metro area, for instance, doesn’t preclude this kind of stuff from happening.
Those experiences are interesting. Still I have trouble getting past my own experiences, which were that I knew a lot more GLBT folks in college than elsewhere, suggesting that whatever effect being a gay adolescent had on kids’ academic performance, it wasn’t hurting their chances of getting into college.
Of course, I may be switching cause and effect: college may be such a relatively welcoming place for GLBT kids that they try disproportionately to get there, in which case their overrepresentation is to be expected; they might, when adjusted for desire to attend college, still be underrepresented. And, of course, my anecdotal experiences aren’t data: it could barely be possible that Evergreen is not a good baseline for considering this question.
Daniel
I didn’t see a lot of gay students at the engineering school I attended during the 90s. Maybe they were all in the closet?