I’ve always thought that the way we do affirmative action is stupid, that UC v Bakke was stupid, and that if colleges want to do affirmative action (which they always will for the forseeable future) they should have an explicit quota system and be transparent about it
I mean, the more transparent they are the easier it is to call them out for e.g. discriminating against Asians, and the less ~holistic~ their process for affirmative action is the less random noise gets introduced by admissions officers’ whims
but last night I talked to a girl who invoked her FERPA rights to read her admissions file and was so upset she almost didn’t come back to school this year, because the file made it clear that she was admitted on the basis of affirmative action
like, I always assumed she knew that already? she knows what her SAT scores are and what SAT scores are typically required to get in here, she knows that she’s a minority from a very disadvantaged background, she knows that our school practices affirmative action (and has always been vocally in favor of it)
but I guess she’s always genuinely believed, or at least told herself, that affirmative action played no role in her acceptance
polite fictions, man