http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/020218/opinion/18john.htm

Culture & Ideas 2/18/02

BY JOHN LEO

An unfair ticket to college

The University of California has hit upon a bright new idea. When picking a
freshman class, it will give an edge to students who have coped with
"personal struggle" and "difficult personal and family situations or
circumstances." Under this plan of "comprehensive review," an applicant's
chances can rise if he or she has overcome a physical handicap, needed to
work after school, was fired or "downsized" at work, lives in a
single-parent or low-income home, or comes from a family in which neither
parent went to high school. "Unusual family disruption" is a plus, too. So
are any "unusual medical/emotional problems" on the part of the applicant.
This means students arerewarded for their parents' failures and for their
own psychological problems as well. If Dad walks out on Mom or beats her up,
or if you have a few suicide tries on your record, you might improve your
chances of leaping over more academically qualified candidates who are short
on family turmoil.

It goes without saying that any wildly irrational scheme installed at an
American university is very likely a "diversity" tactic, undertaken to evade
laws or court rulings against quotas. The law up for evasion here is
Proposition 209, passed by California voters in 1996. It forbids any racial
and ethnic preferences in the public sector, including admissions to the
state's public colleges and universities. The University of California
"comprehensive review" plan for all its campuses contains a pious line
saying that it must not be used to promote racial preferences (i.e., its
framers wouldn't dream of disobeying the law). But moderately alert
observers understand that it is ready-made to reduce the number of Asians
and whites, and to increase the number of blacks and Latinos.

"Diversity" now functions like a militant religion on campus. Some colleges
force professors to sign diversity loyalty oaths, promising to introduce the
faith into their courses, even ones on math and science. Harvard Prof. Lani
Guinier suggests that every college student be required to write an essay on
diversity. And it is generally understood that anyone wishing to be
president of a major university must be ready to promote diversity
preferences despite what the law and the courts might say.

SAT flap. A year ago, Richard Atkinson, president of the University of
California, threatened to scrap the SAT I test as a requirement for UC
admission. SAT I, an aptitude test long considered a useful objective
standard in college admissions, has been under heavy assault by the
diversity lobby as an unfair obstacle to minorities. If SAT I is toppled in
California, it may well start to decline across the country. But opponents
of quotas and preferences seem more worried about plans like "comprehensive
review," which give almost unlimited latitude to admissions officers chafing
under the legal restrictions against preferences.

The most blatant of the racial admissions policies is the University of
Michigan's, which gives 20 additional points to applicants from
"underrepresented" groups, compared with just 3 points for an outstanding
essay and only 12 points for a perfect SAT score. That plan, the last of the
explicitly racial undergraduate programs, was upheld in federal district
court but is now under appeal. In the California plan, the diversity people
are ducking back behind the curtain, promising that no preferences will be
made, but providing conditions and deniability that make preferences likely.

The diversity lobby normally argues that every racial and ethnic group
should have the same proportion of slots on campus as it does in the general
population, regardless of which students did what in high school.
"Comprehensive review" introduces a new standard: college admission as
compensation or reward for a troubled life. Two strains of cultural left
thinking are coming together here: the quota culture and the victim culture.
Colleges can legitimately seek students who show grit and persistence. But
there is no doubt that victim status is about to become a valuable coin of
the realm at the University of California. Single parenthood, which the
cultural left usually insists is just as good as double parenthood, is
framed as a disability in the admissions process. The policy is implicitly
condescending as well: It tries to usher in more blacks and Latinos by
associating them with various dysfunctions. In looking for sociological
indicators of race, while explicitly not mentioning race, the diversity
lobby hopes to outwit the voters and the courts without getting caught. This
is the work of elites disdainful of the values of the middle and working
classes. It is all a shoddy and antidemocratic effort by people who think
the law doesn't apply to them.

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