She states she was discriminated against because of "the morals she stands for".
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She states she was discriminated against because of "the morals she stands for".
Jimmy Higgins
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The first thing I think of when I read that is that she wrote a doozy of an entrance essay (presuming one was necessary).
This is such a bizarre case. We have someone who is expecting to be accepted into a program based strongly on affirmative action. Her qualifications, while not as meager as some have suggested, are still not good enough. I don't know what she is going through, though. I was never rejected by a school I applied to... of course, the highest level school I applied to was Case Western, not Harvard or MIT. Shoot high, aim low?
It's possible that she wrote or said something controversial which would have gotten the admissions people to think negatively about her. However, that didn't get her rejected. With her marks, she needed to give them a reason to accept her and doing things which made her less eligible just left her as I eligible as she was before she did it.
J842P
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Setting aside the issue of AA in the abstract, when I first read about the case I thought there had to be more to the story because of her “I believe I have been rejected because of the morals I stand for” comment. I can only surmise it was something she wrote in her admissions essay.
Also, with regards to her grades, it's hard to judge how good they actually are unless you know details about the grading system and weighting of those grades. For example, my own 3.8 in high school would have been well over a 4.0 if I had gone to school in the next county over because there they categorized a 90-100% grade as an A with a 4.0 averaged into your cumulative GPA whereas in my school system a 90-93.4 was considered a B+ and got averaged in as a 3.5. So if I scored a 91 percent in my English class, for example, I would have gotten a B+ and it would have been a being averaged into my cumulative GPA as a 3.5, but in the other county it would have been a 4.0. Also, AP classes got weighted a whole extra point in the next county over while in my county an AP class got weighted only an extra 0.5. Thus, if that English class was an AP English class, my 91 would have earned me a B+ but would have been weighted as a 4.0, but in the other county it would have earned me an A and would have been averaged into my GPA as a 5.0 (which allowed for absurd GPAs like 4.7s coming from that county). Quite a big difference. So it's hard to say exactly how good a 3.5 is without knowing specifically what that means. This is one of the big problems that comes with the American heterogeneous public school system, where everything is different from county to county. It's nuts. I heard that they have ended up changing the grading scale in my old county so that now they have "minuses," so a 90-93.4 will get you an A- instead of a B+, and will be averaged into your GPA as a 3.7. It doesn't seem like that much, but it would have helped when I applied to out-of-state schools. My own state schools were aware of nuances of the grading policies from different counties.
When taken in conjunction with her ACT score and her lack of ability to utilize anything even remotely related to logic or common sense, it's safe to assume that she's not some kind of exceptional student who found herself on the wrong side of a statistical variance. She's a second tier candidate who didn't make it into a top tier school, as should be expected. Given how annoying she appears to be, it's not unthinkable that she said or did something to piss off the admissions folks and that might have dropped her out of contention if she'd been in contention to begin with. The position that she was in, however, required her to do something to move her up the ladder and not down it and even if she did do something to hurt her chances, missing by a mile instead of missing by an inch still leaves her missing out on getting admitted.
Case? What case could she even attempt to make in court?
Assuming she had evidence (I can't imagine what...) that the school discriminated against her because of "the morals that she stands for", where is it written that they can't?
I mean, we have laws and a Constitutional amendment and stuff that say they can't discriminate based on race...
Toni
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And yet: there were candidates with scores similar to hers or lower who were admitted. In fact, some few years ago, a white student with test scores/GPA similar to hers was rejected and successfully sued to be admitted. To great applause by some on this forum. If, as some claim, the standards should be based only on on test scores, what exactly is the difference between the two candidates? Aside from the color of their skin?
laughing dog
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Yes, of course there were. However, only a few in that group were. The further you are down the candidate ladder, the less people in your group get in. Amongst the two-thirds of the applicants who were rejected, it's likely that the group of 4.0 students had a rejection rate close to zero and they needed a serious problem associated with them to not get in. Then as the incoming test scores get lower and lower, the percentage of people with those score who are passed over gets larger and larger.
When you get down to the B+ students who are below the average applicant, there are far more than the 2/3rds rejection rate in that group. Given that she's a member of a group which has very few successful applicants in it, she needs something exceptional to be a part of the small percentage who make it. So, the correct question is what's the difference between her and the large group of similarly qualified applicants who also didn't get accepted at the same time she didn't? The answer is nothing and that's why she didn't stand out from that group.
Do you think that everyone with a B+ average and moderate test scores should be able to win a lawsuit about getting into the #20 university on the planet because they should all be in there? I don't. I think anyone in that group needs something substantial to be able to compensate for their lower scores in this area. She appears to be an average member of this group.
What is it that you're seeing in her that I'm not which I'm not that would put her above the 70+% of her peers who didn't get in so that the university would need to actively discriminate against her to prevent her entry as opposed to simply seeing that the open spot in their school would be better off given to another?
Toni
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I think you are misunderstanding and it's probably my fault. I am not arguing that this particular applicant should have been accepted. I honestly do not know the contents of her application package, beyond the metrics given in the linked article, and also some of the fairly prestigious honors she achieved, also from the articles.
I am arguing that she has every right to apply, and I can see why she would have thought she would be accepted: others with similar scores have been in the past and at least one very prominent case involved someone with very, very similar GPA/SAT scores.
What I am doing is arguing against those who are lambasting her for a)applying and expecting to get in and b) asserting discrimination when she wasn't. She may or may not have been discriminated in. I personally think that her case is probably pretty weak, given her lower than average SAT scores. But I certainly don't know the whole story and neither does any of us.
I used to live in MI, for a number of years, just outside of Detroit, as a matter of fact. Oh, don't get me wrong: we lived in a very snooty very white suburb with all the right criteria: excellent schools, well educated, high achieving parents, etc. But I traveled into Detroit almost every day for some years, often on public transportation. Having moved there from a much more integrated area, the level of segregation and racism was palpable and shocking.
I would agree that affirmative action is a bad policy except that without affirmative action, our most prestigious institutions would be little else but echo chambers with admission only open to those who already belonged, by virtue of their great grandparents' accomplishments, to exclusive clubs and studied at exclusive preps schools where privilege was a given and was a necessity.
In Michigan, it's been nearly 50 years since the University of Michigan--a state funded university-- stated a GOAL--not a QUOTA but a GOAL of enrolling students to more closely reflect the actual demographics of the state. Fifty years. And virtually nothing has changed, except that there are more hispanic and many more Asian students attending, although each of those groups makes up a very small percentage of the population of Michigan.
The question is why has the low representation of blacks as students remained virtually unchanged? It certainly is not because intelligence is distributed more heavily in one race over another. It isn't even just the disparate spending, although my children attended well funded suburban schools with class sizes under 19 students. Nine miles away, class sizes were double that. And there was a terrible rash of crimes against young girls who were raped and murdered on their way to school. My kids also walked and I never thought twice about their safety. Why didn't those kids in Detroit deserve what my kids had? It damn well wasn't because their parents didn't love them as much or care as much.
The truth is that those in power make the rules and they tend to make the rules in such a way as their power remains in their hands. Not always deliberately to exclude others from power, from a good life. Sometimes, it is simply myopia, or just plain lack of understanding that there are other points of view.
It's been 60 years since Brown V Topeka Board of Education. Not nearly enough progress has been made to ensure that all have equal access to education. Some are still much more equal than others.
It has been argued that students who come from disadvantaged circumstances will not be able to compete well in prestigious universities, yet there are many prominent examples of students from very disadvantaged circumstances who not only compete, but thrive, excel, even, at the most prestigious universities. And some students, with the very best, most privileged backgrounds who struggle. And fail.
As those few who first broke the barriers to higher education and to the best, most prestigious universities start careers and raise families, yes, their children will also benefit from the privilege earned by their parents before them. But meantime, there are thousands and thousands who lack such legs up. Starting before kindergarten.
How many years, how many generations, are children supposed to wait?
All good points, but this here is the one I have an issue with. Accusations of racial discrimination are serious matters. When you get fatuous accusations made, they undermine any legitimate accusations which may also exist. While she had a chance of getting in, she didn't have a good chance as she was at the lower end of potential admission. She then starts screaming racism without any evidence to back that up. All that sort of thing does is give fuel to the actual racists who want to undermine legitimate cases of discrimination by muddying the waters of the conversation about them with fake ones.
I've already forgotten this woman's name, but you know damn well that various other people haven't and she is going to be brought up in every future marginally related conversation to demonstrate how that case is as baseless as this one. Her baseless accusation harms everything that you're arguing in favour of.
angelo
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No doubt some racial discrimination exists, but it's in the minority and not what some minority groups would have us believe.
AthenaAwakened
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do you know something the rest of us don't? I ask because I don't know the totality of the evidence she has.
But I do know that she has us talking about her and she doesn't know is from Adam and probably never will give us a single thought.
Call her what you will, but the girl ain't stupid and she may very well succeed in life to a far greater degree for not getting In to a school than she ever would have had she gotten in.
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Prove it.
Toni
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I don't think you know what 'fatuous' means. HINT: It is not the same thing as a POV with which you disagree. You have no idea whether she has any evidence that racism played a part and neither do I, but we both know that U MI has a pretty small portion of the student body which is black, while MI has a more significant black population.
Keep in mind that this is an 18 year old who has grown up in a city plagued by very serious racism. She has very little other real world experience. Because she's 18. I don't know about you, but I remember pretty well how easy it was for adults who seemed to 'know' a lot to convince me of things. As long as they weren't my parents or my teachers. And she was scooped up by an organization which is looking to make noise. It's pretty easy at any age to get caught up in events, much less at 18.
angelo
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It's human nature to and sometimes done subconsciously.
AthenaAwakened
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prove it.
Show how black folk have gotten wrong their own experiences and history.
Let's go.
angelo
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Did I say they got their own history wrong?
Jimmy Higgins
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Her case is that she is black and did well in high school, therefore acceptance.
It isn't. She has no legs to stand on. As I noted previously, it is very likely some black applicants did get accepted over white applicants because of an AA tiebreaker, which makes her claims even more absurd.
AA has been backed by SCOTUS.
Why on earth would you expect college demographics to mirror the demographics of high school? On the SAT alone, there are wide differences in achievement by group. For example, 34% of Asians compared with 20% of whites, 3% of blacks, 7% of Mexican Americans, and 9% of Native Americans scored above a 600 on the SAT math section (wikipedia)
Fatuous means unreal or illusory. I'm not calling it fatuous because I disagree with it, I'm calling it fatuous because it's a completely baseless claim that she hasn't backed up in any way, shape or form. She made a serious accusation and that makes it incumbent on her to back up that accusation. I hold to the notion that the default position on any claim should be that it's false and it's up to the person making the claim to come up with evidence that proves it's factual and it's not up to others to come up with evidence to disprove it or that they should feel obligated to prove some kind of negative. Creationists and 9/11 Truthers have come up with more rationales for their positions than she's provided, so as soon as she's matched the evidenciary support that they've given, I'm willing to give as much credence to her claims as I do to theirs but currently she doesn't even match up to those with her "they're against me for my morality" tripe.
She's responsible for her own actions. She's made a very serious charge against someone without backing it up. That's the sort of thing that everyone should be against and not the sort of thing that people should support or excuse.