I know what you are saying, billfish678, about the perception aspect of the thing. As factual background, however, there is a different process for getting on law review and getting an editorial board position. The process to get on law review is (everywhere I have seen) both anonymous and at least partially related to grades. After you spend your 2L year on law review, there is a selection process for the editorial board for the 3L year. That isn’t anonymous, and isn’t related to grades (again, everywhere I have seen).
Being made editor-in-chief is a great honor, but unrelated to one’s GPA.
To give you an idea of the anonymity aspect of the write-on competition, each of us on each of the three journals at the end of our 2L year were required to grade the write on competition for the 1L class. So we each got a packet of around 50 papers, with numbers not names. We filled in a score sheet by number, and returned it to the Law review admin person, who compiled the scores, and provided them to faculty, who then matched the scores with the student, and performed the calculation based on write-on score and GPA. We never saw the list connecting the students to the numbers, nor did we ever see a student’s GPA.
Of course, this never stopped allegations. I remember laughing in someone’s face when they suggested there was racism in the process, because white graders were consciously preferencing what they could perceive as white writing. Out of everyone, I’d argue my write-on paper was probably the most identifiable, because I still have a habit of writing English-English rather than American-English (in construction and puntuation, not spelling).
According to the Harvard Crimson, harvard just adopted the pass/fail policy in 2009. Presumably, that would mean that they were still using letter grades when Obama attended.
Not that it matters, he couldn’t have graduated Magna, gotten onto the editorial board of the Harvard Review, much less been elected President of the journal if his grades weren’t top drawer.
Yes, billfish is correct that the teabaggers will accuse him of racial favoritism if his grades are less than perfect. Even if his transcript IS perfect, they will accuse him of cheating or creating a fake transcript. Their cognitive dissonance will not permot them to believe that his academic record could be legit (or, to be perfectly blunt, that a black guy is smarter than they are), so there’s really not much to be gained by releasing it. There is no possible configuration of grades that won’t be attacked.
Still, if they’re so insistent on seeing Obama’s transcripts, let’s see Sarah Palin’s as well.
That Wingnut Daily article, as sleazy and insinuating as it is, doesn’t say anything specifically about Limbaugh or Beck. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if either one had said it. Limbaugh has a longstanding resentment of both black people and academics, and Beck…well, it wouldn’t surprise me if Beck said that Obama was an alien. (I mean that literally. If Glenn Beck actually, literally accused Barack Obama of being an alien tomorrow, I would not be a bit surprised. I don’t think many other people would either), but it has not yet been cited in this thread that either of them actually has.
I can testify from my own occasional, morbidly fascinated perusals of right wing media, that Obama’s college transcripts are a somewhat standard topic on the AM dial and starboard websites.
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t mean to be presenting that link as a confirmation of that specific claim: I thought the call of “Cite?” referred to the broader issue of whether the “Obama hasn’t released his Harvard transcript” complaint really was commonly found in wingnut media in general.
I am certain that my buddy went Harvard and was an editor on law review, I imagine there are several editors. As I know nobody who ever went to Yale law, I’m pretty sure that in the mid 80s, the pass, honors, high honors system was being used, I can recall the conversation from 1984 where he described it to me while justifiably bragging about his admission.
I understand you are talking about what Obama’s opponents are saying and not stating your own opinion. Ok?
That said, I think the information we DO have shows he was an exceptional student. I don’t think he’ll disclose his grades, and Harvard won’t either. But the school confirmed his graduation honors, so we know he was one of the best students in his class, and that’s the end of that. As far as the Law Review goes, knowing that he was performing so well at the school and had already been chosen to edit, there is no reasonable basis for the idea he got the job as an affirmative action hire. We’re not dealing with reasonable people, however, and you’re right - it can’t be proven with 100 percent certainty. But based on the information available, I’d say those claims can be dismissed.
Weirdly, Dan Quayle never released his undergrad transcripts. I only find it strange in that it is hard to imagine what could be so bad about undergrad that it would embarrass you umpty-ump years later.
I for one would like to see Sara Palin’s transcripts.
Is the person in the article a “right wing talk radio host like Beck and O’Reilly”? I mean are we debating why some nobody said something stupid, or is this really something the guys with wide audiences are talking about?
Handwritten equivalent. Same difference. An unintentional misplacement of a letter. Obviously it’s not a spelling mistake. That would make no phonetic sense, plus, it’s asinine to suggest that Obama doesn’t know how to spell “Syracuse.”
