…it just seems ass-backwards to me. Say he’s right, and that Obama had poor grades at Occidental College, but got admitted to Columbia on a purely Affirmative-Action basis, and then got poor grades at Columbia, but got admitted to Harvard Law on the basis of Affirmative-Action, too.
Obama edited the Law Review, an honor which does NOT get assigned to mediocre students. It is (AFAIK) an honor earned by someone with excellent grades at Harvard Law–so if Columbia and Harvard bent their usual admission standards (which they didn’t do, AFAIK) and this dumb, undeserving underachiever who wouldn’t have gotten admitted if he hadn’t been black emerged at the end of the process with stellar grades at Harvard Law, which Trump can’t dispute and can’t even claim to be ignorant of, then isn’t that a great justification for A.A.? Isn’t that more damaging to Trump’s citation of the “unfairness” of A.A. than Obama’s supposedly poor grades?
In other words, Trump’s argument doesn’t even begin to make sense, even to knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing racists.
You don’t have to have even good grades to become editor of the Harvard Law Review. You just have to be a very good writer. Review members are selected solely on the basis of a writing contest, and editors are elected from among the third-year writers.
The chances of a poor student being competent enough to make the review and well enough respected to be elected as editor-in-chief are low, of course.
OK, I stand corrected. But it is impossible for someone to graduate Magna Cum Laude and have poor grades in Harvard law School, so my argument remains even if my prime evidence has been debunked.
The point you make is the point I find myself making whenver AA is debated.
Unfortunately Obama is not the only one who gets this treatment. When Sotomayor was being confirmed, unsuprisingly the same nuts were complaining about her possibly being a AA beneficiary. Nevermind the fact that she graduated summa cum laude from the same school they insinuated she wasn’t qualifed to attend. Also mind you she was also her HS valedictorian. No, no, these things don’t matter, though. Folks were het up that she, by her own admission mind you, had a less than perfect SAT score, which suggests she might have had a few minority AA points thrown her way.
In the meantime, rich white legacy beneficiaries like McCain graduate at the bottom of their class and it’s just business as usual. Bush can be bring home C’s and D’s, but that’s perfectly yanky doodle dandy to the anti-AA crowd. Right.
You can’t have poor grades but Harvard had a major grading scale revision for undergrads in the late 1990’s. Way too many people were graduating with honors and even high honors based on basically being admitted in the first place and then just complying with the work. Harvard isn’t known for being especially difficult as far as universities go and they say that the hardest part is getting in. They pick who they want and groom them through culture using massive resources and don’t expect anyone to do poorly when they are there. That minor scandal was for the undergraduate schools within Harvard specifically but it isn’t out of the question that Harvard Law School would be unusually generous in general but especially with the few black students they had back then. Obama obviously isn’t dumb but he might not have stood out much if he was just some white kid from a wealthy Boston suburb. Harvard makes it really hard for them to get in. The Kennedy’s went to Harvard for God sake because of who they were. They would be fighting for admission to a 2nd tier school if they were the same people now and just poorer.
Legacy beneficiaries would more properly be noted as Bush and Kerry, and honestly I don’t think anyone genuinely believes those individuals to be at their respective schools based on personal aptitude, both were something like C students.
There isn’t anything inherently wrong with legacies, if you’re a private institution with a massive endowment that is only so massive because of rich powerful folks like George Bush’s daddy, it makes sense to let their kids go to your school because the money and power they bring ends up with the school having enough money to give financial assistance to the smart kids who aren’t from rich families. A lot of people who go to Harvard or Yale and come from poor families benefit immensely from the money the rich families give the school.
McCain went to a federal naval academy and there is no legacy system there.
You have to complete a formal admissions process whether you’re the son of an Admiral or the son of a moonshiner. You have to be appointed by one of a list of special persons who can make appointments(U.S. Congressmen, U.S. Senator, Vice President each get something like 5 now, the number of appointments per person has changed over the years. If you’re the child of a 100% disabled veteran you can get in that way (only 65 per year), children of Medal of Honor recipients are admitted automatically if they meet the admissions requirements (no limit on number), 100 per year are admitted if they are the children of career military officers (competitive since only the top 100 are admitted.) There are a few other special cases, but generally it’s not an institution noted for having legacy admissions. It can be relatively easy to get admitted or very difficult, based on where you live. All of the Federal academies have had this problem since as long as I can remember, some States the limited slots are very competitive with many applicants being turned away, and some States have trouble filling their slots with qualified applicants.
FWIW McCain apparently scored very well on his entrance exams, but of course did horribly in school there–showing entrance exams aren’t everything.
Law schools curve, including Harvard. If he graduated magna cum laude he was probably at least in the top 15%. Top 5-10% is usually Order of the Coif.
Law school has actually gotten easier over time. Law schools used to admit bigger classes and flunk them out-that’s why Paper Chase, 1L etc all sound so crazy. Now they admit smaller classes and nobody flunks, but a lot of people graduate in the bottom half, which today might be just as bad the lower your school’s ranking (considering the legal market).I mean seriously, your comment is just strange and feels like you just want to talk about how Harvard undergrad grade inflates. Well, so do most American universities except the tech schools & UChicago but all the national law schools have strict curves it’s just that your chances of getting a job while being low-ranked rise as your school’s ranking goes up.
Do you actually know anything about law school, or Harvard law school, or do you just want to throw around the idea that Harvard Law grade-inflates black admits and women and Jews and whomever all the way through?
It’s treated as a given they belonged at the schools that they attended, though. They’re given a pass because they’re rich, white men. Minorities are not given that pass; they are assumed by default that they don’t belong.
Except for the fact that it lets kids into schools who otherwise would have not gotten in (thereby displacing those who otherwise might have gotten in) and favors rich white people over those who aren’t lucky enough to be born into the home of an alumnus. How is this fair?
It makes economic sense for the school, but just because something makes economic sense doesn’t make it fair. (There’s an economic rationale to justify AA, too. And your argument actually supports the existence of AA at these schools…what better way to balance out the legacy advantage than to have a system in place that favors those who are less likely to benefit from legacy due to race and SES.)
Regardless, the rationale behind having legacy students is seperate from how we view legacy vs AA students. The naysayers that question Obama’s acumen on the grounds that he might have benefited from AA don’t extend that scrutiny to their own. Those that demand to know Sotomayor’s SAT scores to see if she’s fit enough to sit on the bench, don’t demand the same for her white colleagues who also might have had a point or two thrown their way. It’s racism, plain and simple.
His grandfather and father went to that school. I’m not so naive as to assume that this didn’t help him get in. The federal system is not immune from personal politics. I work for the feds; there ain’t not meritocracy in these here parts. It’s all about who you know.
Note that Harvard Law Review does explicitly admit some members on an affirmative-action basis, but presumably it does not announce which ones or even precisely how many.
