Almost immediately after the Supreme Court’s decision saying that affirmative action admissions based on race were unconstitutional, protests on the left sprang up attacking legacy admissions. Democratic lawmakers led by the socialist Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced legislation to deny federal aid to institutions that offered legacy admissions to children of alumni and donors. One of the co-sponsors of the bill Jeff Markey (D-MA) said “every seat that a university reserves for the already wealthy and well connected, that is, the children of donors and the children of alumni, is a seat not available to a more qualified individual who comes from a financially challenged background, or who comes from a minority community.” Note that Markey is saying, probably unintentionally, that the legacy admit must be less qualified than the minority applicant (presumably so long as the minority applicant is not Asian). So the test would be to see if there were any brown or black applicant who was rejected and more qualified than any legacy admit. Note that the legacy admit might be the children of black or brown alumni or donors. Would they be subject to the same caveat?
Not to be outdone, The US Department of “Education” launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard’s use of legacy admissions. The department said that it is investigating “whether the University discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.” Of course, Harvard will deny that race plays a factor even though virtually all of its legacy admissions are white. Nonetheless, I don’t see how legacy admissions could be considered illegal under the Supreme Court decision since race is not a factor in making the decision. However, Wesleyan University (Connecticut) announce that it would no longer have legacy admissions. I doubt very seriously if this will have any impact on their student body. One would assume that legacy admissions are probably from well educated households, most likely of some means. The students probably went to first rate high schools and scored highly on whatever admissions criteria are set by the schools. Wesleyan is simply burnishing its liberal creds by making a sounds-good announcement. My father once told me “that sounds good – if you are interested in sounds.”
Some schools like MIT and Cal Tech do not have legacy admits while Harvard and Yale do. Significantly, most schools with legacy admits are private. The so-called elite schools on the east coast first instituted legacy admits along with opening admissions offices in order to limit Jewish enrollment in the early 1900s. As such, the intent was clearly discriminatory since virtually all alumni were white protestants. My daughter went to my alma mater, the University of Georgia, and my youngest granddaughter graduates from Georgia in December. Were they legacy admits?
Today the question is how many slots are clearly marked for legacy admissions? Surely, some children of donors and alumni are rejected in the application process. I am somewhat disappointed that I was on the Chapel Hill faculty in the late 1970s and they were the other school involved in the admissions suit. Certainly they could have addressed the other side by offering legacy admissions to the children of graduates of their state’s HBCUs, assuming that the parents were denied admission to the white schools because of their race during segregated times. Would those on the left oppose such a program? Just saying.
haroldblackphd.com 