Just another Sites At Penn State site
Here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ixqFpI_4BrMWSQVA51Hch_EagIPJ2DIEbsJaXusXe-8/edit?usp=sharing
Feel free to roast everything I have so far it’s just a draft. Also I’m most likely not going to use most of the random graphs I have pasted in that doc.
Back in 2016, during the presidential election season, I remember several of my Chinese friends saying that their parents voted for Trump because they thought he would make it easier for Asian Americans to be accepted into prestigious colleges. Essentially, they believed he would remove the affirmative action system as they knew it. They believed that the current affirmative action system was making it harder for Asian Americans to be accepted into universities, and that getting rid of affirmative action would end this “reverse discrimination,” whether or not it actually existed. But did Donald Trump actually make any changes related to affirmative action, and have those changes come at all close to fully ending affirmative action?
During Obama’s presidency, several guidance documents involving race and school admissions were created. One of these documents stated that colleges and universities were free to “voluntarily consider race to further the compelling interest of achieving diversity,” essentially saying that diversity was an important enough factor for colleges to worry about that they could at least partially judge students’ college applications based on the race of the applicant. Although these guidance documents do not actually determine the law, they help guide and clarify the law’s implementation. Therefore, these documents did not force, but encouraged colleges to consider race during admissions decisions in order to generate diversity on campus.
However, on July 3rd, 2018, the Trump administration rescinded these guidelines. The Education and Justice Departments stated that these policy guidelines, “advocate policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution,” and a spokesman for the Justice Department declared that the executive branch cannot “circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law.” Along the same lines, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos summed up their decisions by writing, “Schools should continue to offer equal opportunities for all students while abiding by the law.”
The American Civil Liberties Union responded immediately to this move by the Trump administration by saying, “This is another attack by Sessions and President Trump on people of color,” and called the move “a war being waged on civil liberties from the highest levels of government.” The ACLU is upset because affirmative action policies generally all favor minorities or people of color, and revoking those policies will most likely only harm these minorities. Although Trump has not yet fully destroyed affirmative action policies, rescinding the policy guidelines established by Obama, a supporter of affirmative action, marks a start down the path of ridding colleges of affirmative action. However, this is not the only move Trump has made in his campaign to overturn affirmative action.
After July 2018, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court, giving Trump the ability to further cement this stance on affirmative action. Trump nominated Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh to fulfill the position. Kavanaugh’s views on affirmative action are very similar to Trump’s, which is why many affirmative action supporters are worried. It is expected that he may be the necessary swing vote on the Supreme Court to rule affirmative action unconstitutional.
One lawsuit that is currently underway that could change the fate of affirmative action is S.F.F.A. v. Harvard. Created by Edward Blum, a financial advisor devoted to overturning race-based laws, Students for Fair Admissions is a membership organization similar to the ACLU or NAACP, many of whom are Asian American students with high credentials who were rejected from prestigious universities. They believe that they were unfairly evaluated by Harvard’s college admissions team, and argue that affirmative action is being used to harm their chances. They claim that although many Asian Americans have higher standardized test scores, grades, and extracurricular activities, Harvard grades them lower in the “personal category,” including aspects such as essays, letters of recommendation, and interviews, only because of their race.
While the SFFA hopes to someday remove race entirely from college admissions decisions (i.e. not even having a check-box for an applicant to select their race), it is unlikely that this will happen. Rakesh Khurana, the dean of Harvard College, argues that it is necessary to ask for a student’s race because it often fundamentally shapes who they are. Personally, I feel that if race was such a big part of an applicant’s identity, they would talk about it in their college essays anyways, so there is no need to ask for it in that case. However, it would also make it nearly impossible for colleges to guarantee diversity, which is something many top universities boast. The lawsuit was originally started all the way back in 2014, and aspects of it are still in court today, so it is unlikely that any clear decision will be made any time soon.
Sources:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-affirmative-action
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/03/us/politics/trump-affirmative-action-race-schools.html
Possible title: Making College Admissions Fairer through Race-Blind Applications
Nearly 70% of high school graduates nowadays move on to attend college. With so many students applying to college, colleges must have systems that decide whom to accept and whom to reject. However, many people think these admissions procedures are biased and unfair. One famous court case that has been around for the past few years is S.F.F.A v. Harvard, where a large group of students, consisting of mostly Asian Americans, is suing Harvard University because they believe Harvard’s admissions policies unfairly discriminate against Asians. Although this specific court case is only examining any possible discrimination against Asian Americans, its outcome could decide the fate of affirmative action as a whole.
Cornell Law School defines affirmative action today as “A set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future.” Essentially, its goal is to eradicate discrimination while also making up for such discrimination in the past.
Colleges’ affirmative action policies are often highly criticized by the public, and several schools have even been taken to court over them. In 1996, the state of California’s Proposition 209 banned public affirmative action programs in employment, education, and contracting. In 1998, the University of California removed the affirmative action section of their application review process. As a result of this ban, UC Berkeley had a 61% drop in admissions of minority students, and UCLA a 36% drop, proving that the affirmative action had been greatly affecting acceptance rates for minorities.
Affirmative action has clearly been a topic of debate among colleges and students. Although it does help create diversity on college campuses and helps disadvantaged individuals and minorities, the drawbacks of affirmative action outweigh the benefits. Affirmative action is essentially discrimination against non-minorities, it reinforces stereotypes and racism against minorities, it may cause under-qualified students to be accepted into prestigious colleges, and it does not follow the principles of a meritocracy. Colleges and universities should implement new college admissions procedures that do not judge different races more or less harshly, to create fairer and less biased admissions policies.
As you might have heard by now, federal prosecutors recently uncovered what has been called the largest college admissions scam ever prosecuted. Essentially, the scam was that rich parents were paying certain people to ensure that their children would be accepted into a certain college. So far, about 50 people have been charged, including two SAT/ACT administrators, one exam proctor, nine college sports coaches, and 33 parents. The ringleader of the admissions scheme was William Singer, who was the founder of a college preparatory business, along with its fake charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation.
The conspirators used two main approaches to get students accepted: faking standardized test scores or pretending that the students were talented athletes. To get higher SAT or ACT scores, parents generally paid between $15,000 and $75,000. There were multiple ways Singer and his colleagues achieved this. First, Singer often encouraged parents to use medical documentation to get a learning disability waiver, which could allow their children to receive more time to take the standardized tests and let them take the test with less supervision than normal. Singer then instructed the students to sign up to take the exam in either a public school in Houston or a private school in West Hollywood, two locations that Singer controlled.
With this alternative supervision, the student could take the exam in a room with only the proctor. The proctor, who was in on the scheme, could then either guide students to the correct answers on the tests, or go back and correct the students’ answers after they finished the exam. Apparently, many students were not even aware that their answers would be changed. Alternatively, Singer would simply hire another person to take the SAT or ACT for the original student. However, for the SAT or ACT essay portion of the exam, the handwriting on the test would need to match that of the student who the stand-in was imitating. To get around this obstacle, at least one family sent in samples of their student’s handwriting to be mimicked. Through a combination of these techniques, Singer would raise a student’s test scores. Although having high test scores does not guarantee admission to a particular school, it does raise a student’s chances, and makes the student appear more intelligent than they may actually be.
However, the second way in which Singer and his colleagues scammed the college admissions system actually could guarantee a student was accepted to a certain school. Through Singer’s connections with certain university athletic coaches, parents would pay the coaches large sums of money (one family paid $500,000 for two children) to have them identify their children as athletic recruits. To make it more believable, Singer’s colleagues would photoshop the students’ faces onto photos of other, real high school athletes. They would also falsify their college application resume, adding fake awards such as “3-year Varsity Letter winner” or “Team MVP 2017”. Because colleges do not have the time to fact-check every award that someone lists on their application, it would make it seem as though they were legitimate star athletes. These students would then be accepted to the university as recruits, but would never join the actual team.
Another essential aspect of the scam was how the payments worked. Because the payments involved such large amounts of money, the parents couldn’t just transfer it to someone else’s personal bank account without raising suspicion. So, they would “donate” to Singer’s fake charity, the Key Worldwide Foundation. The foundation would then funnel this money to the universities, which would even allow the parents to claim tax deductions.
Needless to say, this scheme has been exposed. Singer pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice. Many famous parents were also charged, such as actors Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman, who were set for bail at over $250,000 each.
Perhaps the worst part of this entire scheme is that some children didn’t even know their parents were paying to cheat them into being accepted. In one case, a parent whose son was accepted to USC as a track recruit through Singer’s scam told Singer, “[my son has no idea, and that’s the way we want to keep it.” These children would have believed they were accepted to whatever university based solely on their merit, and it must have been awful for them to find out that they only got in because their parents cheated for them.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/us/admissions-scandal.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/12/us/college-admission-cheating-scheme/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/college-admissions-scandal-questions.html
After covering the main arguments for why affirmative action is good and should remain last week, this week I will cover the opposite point of view. I will describe the viewpoints of people who are against affirmative action, and the main reasons why people say it does not work or should be ended. There are many aspects of affirmative action and its effects that people point to to argue that it is not an effective policy.
One of the biggest complaints about affirmative action is that it is reverse discrimination. Essentially, opponents say that affirmative action was created to end discrimination by race, but it has done the opposite. White people, who may be harder-working or more qualified, could be passed over because of their race. Also, nowadays there are many white people who live in poverty. It is possible that a smart and hard-working white person could be rejected from somewhere while a rich but less hard-working minority student is accepted.
Similarly, people maintain that the only way to truly promote a color-blind society is to get rid of programs like affirmative action. As long as race is a factor that is asked about and considered during college and job applications, affirmative action will be promoting the idea that race makes people different. For example, people liken asking about race for jobs that it will have nothing to do with to asking about eye color. If there is no association between these elements and intelligence or skill, there is no need to ask about them.
Another major issue with affirmative action is that it does not follow the principles of a meritocracy. That is, the best-suited or most intelligent candidates for a position may not always be selected. In a true meritocracy, race would not be considered at all, and a person’s ability for a job would be the only factor examined. Along this line of thinking, affirmative action doesn’t promote equality; it actually harms it, because not everyone is given equal chances.
Affirmative action also raises the possibility that a person accepted into a college or job position may not be ready for the position. Although the person may thrive at that college or job, there is the chance that they will be overwhelmed. Not only does this hurt the company or school who selected the candidate, it can also hurt that person’s self-esteem. Some people even point to lower graduation rates for minorities as proof that minorities are attending schools too rigorous or difficult for their ability.
Affirmative action can also be seen to reinforce stereotypes and racism against minorities. Many people say that minority groups need affirmative action to succeed. If a minority student does get accepted into a certain college, people may write off their skills or hard work, and say that it was only because of affirmative action. In this way, affirmative action can lessen any achievements of a minority. The policies of affirmative action can also be seen as condescending to minorities. It could be interpreted as meaning that minorities are incapable of doing/achieving things on their own and therefore need help to do so.
Perhaps the largest justification for why affirmative action should remain is that it promotes diversity within the workplace and on college campuses. However, although it is more likely that people of different races will have more varying viewpoints than people of the same race, this is not always true. Just because someone is of a certain race does not always mean that he will have the same viewpoints or culture as the majority of his race.
When affirmative action was first started, many minorities were still suffering the effects of the extreme discrimination of the past, and it was in part meant to make up for these crimes and wrongdoings. Nowadays, however, almost everyone would agree that the US is much better in terms of discrimination than it was 75 or 100 years ago. Because of this, many people say that having affirmative action around today is just unnecessary. However, it is unlikely that there will be any removal of affirmative action, because of how difficult it is to change a longstanding act in government, and there would most certainly be backlash if someone wanted to remove it.
Sources:
https://greengarageblog.org/20-principal-pros-and-cons-of-affirmative-action
https://vittana.org/12-advantages-and-disadvantages-of-affirmative-action
For this blog, I am going to go over the main arguments for why affirmative action is a good thing and should remain, along with some of the reasons it was created in the first place. Although it will seem biased, I’ll cover the opposing point of view in my next blog post. Some points may relate to affirmative action in the workforce and other places, but I am going to focus mainly on affirmative action relating to college admissions. When it comes to affirmative action, there are three main incentives: diversity, fairness, and equality.
One of the biggest reasons for affirmative action is that it helps ensure diversity on college campuses. Besides the education, one of the biggest benefits of going to college is the new experiences you have and the new perspectives you gain. College is a place to grow as a person and break out of your comfort zone, and it is hard to do so without diversity, which can increase your understanding of the world and expose you to viewpoints you might otherwise never realize. Because of this, many colleges actively publish and take pride in their diversity statistics, such as what percent of students are what race. Without affirmative action policies, there is no doubt that there would be less diversity at these colleges, and it would thus be a worse learning environment for students.
The second major argument for affirmative action is that it helps disadvantaged individuals. When it comes to money, minorities have a poverty rate almost twice as large as whites, giving them a huge extra obstacle to overcome. Although many colleges boast “need-blind admissions,” meaning they don’t consider an applicant’s financial situation as part of their situation, a lack of money can still hinder a student’s college application. For example, a student from a poor family will not have the money to spare to pay for an SAT/ACT tutor or class, which likely would have raised their score and thus their application. On the same note, they will be unable to hire people to review their essays and application as a whole (which does happen). They may not even be able to afford a flight to visit their desired college campus, which many colleges factor into their application as “demonstrated interest.” Affirmative action takes these hindrances into consideration and helps level the playing field for all levels of income.
Besides the lack of money, a person living in a poor area or neighborhood still has other obstacles to overcome. The high school they attend will also likely be poor, meaning the quality of teachers and therefore education is not as good. Also, that school’s guidance counselors may not be well-trained, and so any letters of recommendation they write will not be as good as those by a guidance counselor from a richer school. Finally, college admissions officers are more likely to spend more time reading an application from a well-known prestigious high school than a poor one. In this case, affirmative action helps take into account the circumstances of a person’s upbringing and background. For instance, if a minority student from a poor area did fairly well on his application with minimal resources and help, the college is willing to bet that with proper guidance and resources, the same student would perform exceptionally.
Finally, affirmative action promotes the equality of all races and ethnicities. Part of the reasoning behind the creation of affirmative action was to help make up for the centuries of oppression of minorities, specifically African Americans. The idea was that these minorities are still suffering some lingering effects of discrimination, and affirmative action’s goal was to put an end to any discrimination still existing. Especially within the workspace, affirmative action ensures that all candidates are treated equally and given equal opportunities to prove themselves. With college, affirmative action encourages minority students to pursue a higher education, and ends any stigma against minorities going to university.
The need for diversity, fairness, and equality are the main forces that have kept affirmative action in place for so long, and as long as affirmative action continues to uphold these values, it will likely endure into the future, barring something drastic happening.
Sources:
https://greengarageblog.org/20-principal-pros-and-cons-of-affirmative-action
As college students, it’s a fair bet to say that we’ve almost all heard of affirmative action. Whether it came up during the college application process or during college admissions period, affirmative action is often present in people’s thoughts when dreaming of getting accepted into a certain school. Most people would define affirmative action as a policy favoring certain minorities in college acceptances, but what is affirmative action officially? Or does it officially exist at all?
Cornell Law School defines affirmative action today as “A set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination among applicants, remedy the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future.” Essentially, its goal is to eradicate discrimination while also making up for such discrimination in the past. However, the prevailing philosophies behind affirmative action had existed before the phrase “affirmative action,” in the form of anti-discrimination laws. The most famous court case relating to discrimination occurred in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, when the Supreme Court ruled that public schools may not exclude minority students from white schools. It declared that the previous doctrine of “separate but equal” facilities, established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), was “inherently unequal”.
The term “affirmative action” first appeared in President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, in 1961. It mandated government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” Government contractors were also required to document their affirmative action programs, which are enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Soon after, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, which prohibited employment discrimination by large employers. It essentially expanded Kennedy’s executive order to include non-government contractors as well, greatly increasing the scope of affirmative action policies.
While professional employment is certainly a major component of affirmative action policies, the most controversial and debated aspect is that of college admissions, and there have been many court cases over schools’ uses of affirmative action. In 1978, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as a factor in selecting college applicants for admission. However, it also declared the University of California Medical School’s system of allotting eighteen percent of each entering class to minority students unconstitutional. Therefore, the Supreme Court was ruling that while race could certainly be a factor in admissions decisions, schools could never outright deny students only on the basis of race, as they were doing for non-minorities with eighteen percent of the incoming class.
Colleges’ affirmative action policies are often highly criticized by the public, and several schools have even been taken to court over them. In 1996, the state of California’s Proposition 209 banned public affirmative action programs in employment, education, and contracting. In 1998, the University of California removed the affirmative action section of their application review process. As a result of this ban, UC Berkeley had a 61% drop in admissions of minority students, and UCLA had a 36% drop, proving that the affirmative action had been greatly affecting acceptance rates for minorities.
In 2003, two different court cases arose against the President of the University of Michigan. In Grutter v. Bollinger, Barbara Grutter, who was white, claimed that the University of Michigan’s Law School denied her because they gave minority groups a higher advantage when seeking admission, as compared to similarly qualified non-minority applicants. The Law School determined that although race was considered, it was considered alongside many other factors, and was only considered lightly. In this case, the Supreme Court upheld Michigan, stating that its admissions program helped obtain “an educational benefit that flows from student body diversity.”
In Gratz v. Bollinger, Jennifer Gratz, a white Michigan resident, claimed that the University of Michigan’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions gave an unfair advantage to minorities. However, in this case, the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy was to add twenty points immediately to any minority applicant’s profile, and a student needed 100 points to be accepted. Gratz claimed that this twenty-point advantage violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Supreme Court agreed, calling the twenty-point bonus to minorities unconstitutional.
As you can see, affirmative action is a very prominent issue in today’s society, but before you can accurately discuss and take a stance it you must understand what affirmative action actually is and its effects. In future blogs we will explore arguments for and against affirmative action as well as who supports each position.
Sources:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/affirmative_action
https://www.aaaed.org/aaaed/history_of_affirmative_action.asp
