Correct, it did not, but more to the point, if you could be bothered to read my second quote, the geographic diversity idea was scuttled pretty quickly.
Thank you, and I bid you a nice day too! But I think what you’re trying to allege is that it’s actually the Harvard admissions committees and policies that are “jaw-droppingly stupid” since they maintained then, and maintain today, that they don’t impose quotas. I suspect they would disagree with your characterization of their abject stupidity.
I have, because they were racist. I also never claimed that Harvard admissions policies weren’t discriminatory – indeed if you look just a little upthread you’ll find that I said that any such selection process is by definition discriminatory. I do, however, see major differences between the objectives of Harvard boards governing admissions policies and the intimidation and voter suppression tactics used against black voters by racist southern bigots. Perhaps you don’t.
Although most of my grad school education was focused on ecology, I took a biology of cancer seminar just for the hell of it. In no other class had I ever felt so uncomfortable. When we started discussing racial disparities, the instructor kept framing things as “we” and “they”. I seemed to be the only person who noticed this, perhaps because I was the only member of “they” in the classroom (though there may have been Jewish ears present when she lectured on BRCA1.)
I didn’t accuse you, or for that matter the people who imposed the Jewish quotas as being “stupid”.
I said your argument was.
I’ll add that it’s extremely possible for smart people to believe idiotic ideas without being stupid.
Most early 20th Century intellectuals in both the US and the UK were fervent believers in Eugenics which was vastly more stupid than any claims you’ve made and it was believed by people smarter than both you and me.
Leaving aside the fact that you clearly either ignored or didn’t understand what I was communicating, if you think that policies that are designed to limit the number of black people from voting are “racist” but school policies designed to limit the number of Jews to colleges aren’t “anti-Semitic” but are merely “discriminatory” then that is more than a little odd.
If the only thing that he can write so impressively and humorously about is being fat, gay and Mexican, then maybe his writing skills are not so great.
Now you are being (I hope intentionally) dense. The point is to write impressively and humorously about the experiences that defined his sense of who he is and what he wants to become, in his case an experience of being other, an outsider to many groups, and integrating that experience positively. No doubt someone who can write impressively and humorously about that can likely also write well about other things … but writing impressively and humorously about the public’s obsession with a particular television show, or about a period of history, or a debate in science, is not the information that an admission committee is usually* wanting to read about in a personal essay. They want to learn about who the candidate is.
*I say “usually” because some places really care more that you can write well and maybe creatively or insightfully. University of Chicago’s essay prompts come to mind - mine chose “So Where is Waldo Anyway?” … great essay, a film noir style radio play in which Waldo, striped shirt and all, was the lover the detective was hired by the femme fatal to find, but who turned out to be a killer … set in Hyde Park of course. Grades and test scores still not enough to get more than waitlisted though.
Why? Why in the world does that matter to someone considering his application to college? If the point is the ability to “write impressively and humorously” then any topic will do. If the point is that he’s a fat gay Mexican kid, then no, it should have nothing to do with whether his application is approved or not.
Yes, and if his identity is all locked up in his ethnicity or gender, then he is not that good a candidate.
1920s Harvard: We are not going to have “quotas” but we have too many Jews and we know how many we want as our max, so let’s give a one up to legacy students (they’re our proper old money types) and give preferential selection to areas where there are not many Jews. That should cut it down by a half or at least a third, right? That’s getting to the right numbers, not too many. All agreed? Fine.
The argument today is not whether or not there is an explicit Asian quota; the accusation is that there is a “de facto” one. And the appearance of one may just be the residual of a system that was explicitly created to limit the number of Jews to an acceptable number (without using an explicit quota) that has been justified for other reasons for so long that no one still remembers that those reasons were always after the fact rationalizations. (And of cultural factors within the Asian American community that concentrate high achieving students into a limited range of subject, and of a desire to have some pretense of diverse sociocultural experiences in the portion of the class not reserved for legacy and other big money families.)
Again, no the point is not just writing impressively: it is about how he has come to think about who he is.
Your belief is that someone whose life story has been shaped by being other makes them not that good a candidate. Okay. If you were on an admission committee that would be your response; it still informed you. Others may come to another conclusion, depending on what he wrote and how he wrote it. Whatever it speaks to who is actually is and from the brief description provided by Manda Jo suggests someone who is able to discuss issues of labels and expectations in a manner that disarms and unites. My guess from Manda Jo’s post stating he wrote how it taught him to get over himself is that he generalized from his experience to how others also feel outsider … don’t know … but the story of who he is should not be subject to censorship because part of how he became who he is tied up with his and others’ responses to his ethnicity or sexual preference or body size.
No. Someone whose life story has ONLY been shaped by being “the other” and who can not write “impressively and humorously” about his other life experiences that have nothing to do with his ethnicity is not that good a candidate.
Anyway, this hunt for the “victims who overcame the obstacles society placed in front of them” in college admissions is a fad, and a stupid one. Especially if the victimhood is self-reported.
Reminds me of George Costanza’s attempt to get into that NY condo thwarted because they are going to give the condo to the guy claiming to be the Andrea Doria survivor. And of course in the end the guy who bribed the building’s super gets it.
Nice curveball there, champ! The “Jewish quotas” live on! But I’m not aware of any “people who imposed the Jewish quotas” – at least, not at Harvard.
Look, I think it’s pretty clear that Lowell had anti-Semitic beliefs by today’s standards, and advocated practices accordingly. No doubt the same prejudices existed against blacks and other minorities at the time even in the most liberal institutions. Anti-Semitism was quite widespread in the US at least well into the 40s. The point is that quotas were not imposed and were strenuously opposed by many, and even “geographic diversity” measures were short-lived and had virtually no impact. Rightly or wrongly, the Ivy Leagues moved toward a broader all-encompassing ideal driving admission criteria that has evolved to the present day. You may not like it, and it may have discriminatory aspects, but it’s neither racist nor quota-based. It is biased, as I said before, to the prevailing power base, and Harvard couldn’t care less if the prevailing power base was white, black, or purple with 20-foot antennae sprouting out of its collective foreheads.
Discrimination is not the same as racism as there are an infinite number of factors on which we can discriminate, including intelligence, gender, height, eye color, and a few million other things. Racism is a specific subset of discrimination that is frequently hateful and typically more virulent. The words “discrimination”, “racism”, and “quotas” all have specific meanings and I was using these words in the sense in which they are generally understood. If you choose to blur them all together into some vague sense of “not very nice”, that’s not something I need to be accountable for.
Your claim that the “geographic diversity” quotas at Ivy League universities were “short-lived” is demonstrably false.
I’ll presume you’ve heard of Bill Bradley. If not he was a US Senator who ran for President in 2000. He was also an enthusiastic proponent of Affirmative Action and he used as an example in support of it that he had benefitted from “geographical diversity” quotas.
Beyond that, Peter Novick, Malcolm Gladwell and others have pointed out that the Ivy Leagues continued such “geographical diversity” quotas for decades.
Beyond that, I don’t really see a point in continuing this conversation since you seem to be the only person on this thread who happens to believe that there were no anti-Jewish quotas at Harvard and other universities, you seem to be engaging in thinly-veiled insults rather than making arguments and I’d question whether you’re debating in good faith. If you want to continue this discussion I’d recommend either taking it to the other GD thread or opening one in the pit, though I doubt I’ll be participating.
Well, we do not know that, do we? We know what in his life he DID write about. This impressed** Manda JO** but leaves you asking “lemme see you write as impressively about something else in your life”. Fair enough but that’s a different complaint.
You would demand that he write just as impressively about some “neutral” subject, or that he write something that would remain just as impressive after being redacted for “neutrality”? And who’s going to define "neutral’ or redact for neutrality? I sure wouldn’t want to be in the latter panel.
His being a fat gay Mexican kid probably was the most important aspect to his development of sense of self and of learning how people, of various cultures, himself included I suspect, respond to identifiers. The “only”? Probably not. But why should that which was most important be censored?
I do not see discussing that as claiming victimhood and see your reading that into it as coming out of some agenda in your head.
OTOH if rooting for someone who has a story of having achieved despite odds stacked against them is a fad then it is very long lasting one, going back to at least David and Goliath and I am sure before that and a key part of many political campaign narratives. Oh we love our “humble beginnings” and always have.
Her argument was that (responding to my post about it) if the kid was precluded from writing about being Mexican, he would not have had the chance that he had.
Nothing referring to the applicant’s ethnicity or gender. Not too much to ask, is it?
I agree. That is, I agree that this is how it started, with policies that embodied the anti-semitism that was the norm at the time, and no doubt happily excluded other minorities, too, again, the norm for the time.
I find it hard to believe that today, admissions policies are anything more insidious than what I said in the previous post, catering to the existing power base. There may indeed be de facto discrimination against Asians as a side effect, though I would not use the word “quota” which means something entirely different. But the fundamental question is this: does anyone have the right to roar in and demand that Harvard and other Ivy Leagues abandon longstanding policies whose purpose is to promote the best interests of all their stakeholders – students, alumni, and the supporters of their endowment? And if so, why? What would be the net societal gain or loss? I’m not sure that I have the definitive answers to those questions, but aren’t those the key questions?
I think if someone can write about being a fat Mexican well enough that they leave a positive impression on the reader, they’ve done what they were supposed to it.
Even if we accept that one’s “victimhood” does not make for an interesting topic, the fact that this kid made it interesting renders this a point moot.
I can think of a number of topics a high school student might choose to write about, that I wouldn’t recommend. Like how it feels to watch paint drying. But if an 18-year-old chooses this topic and they write about it so well that the reader forgets to be bored, then A+ for them.
I’m guessing kids who attempt to write about intentionally profound subjects are more likely to miss the mark than kids who write about what they’ve experienced.
Admissions officers probably don’t get to read a lot of stories about how it feels to be a fat Mexican. But I’m guessing they probably hear a lot of “My personal epiphany from that one time my youth group volunteered at the homeless shelter.”
I use words to mean what they mean. I fully acknowledge the anti-Semitic origins of admissions policies in the 20s.
I’m fascinated and quite mystified by that remark. Perhaps you’d care to point out where you think you see “thinly-veiled insults” or debating in bad faith, both of which would certainly be news to me.
Well insofar as Harvard takes Federal funding (16% of their operating budget) one of their stakeholders is the American people as a whole.
Legacy preference minimally reinforces classism in our society, a hereditary advantage. That is not consistent with what most of us see as American values. As such the American people as stakeholder can and should insist that funding come with the strings attached that legacy status not be a factor in admissions. Until we do any institution that believes (correctly or not) that pandering to alums in that way substantially increases donations cannot be blamed for doing so.
If you’re going to claim that your use of the phrase “champ” wasn’t meant as an implicit, as opposed to explicit, insult then you’re insulting the intelligence of everyone in this thread including your’s.
But I think what you’re trying to allege is that it’s actually the Harvard admissions committees and policies that are “jaw-droppingly stupid” since they maintained then, and maintain today, that they don’t impose quotas. I suspect they would disagree with your characterization of their abject stupidity.
Grades and test scores still not enough to get more than waitlisted though.