Hail to the Victors
by P.D. Lesko
I am a Michigan native. Other than three years of teaching abroad at an Italian university, I have spent my life in Michigan. I am a Midwestern cliché, though not to the extent once described by a friend from the East Coast. All Midwesterners, she announced one day, ate beef and wore fur coats. I will admit to enjoying the occasional hotdog or hamburger, but I have never worn a fur coat (my friend specifically mentioned mink coats). When I chose where to attend college, there really was no choice. I sent out one application; I would attend the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and I did.
Here in Michigan, we are blessed with a world-class public university. Further, the University of Michigan sets aside a certain percentage of spots each year for Michigan residents. So, with a solid B average in high school, 1,300 on your SATs and an application fee, a Michigan resident who applies by the deadline has an excellent chance of admission. That’s bad news for the non-resident applicants, but that’s the way it is. Michigan residents have first crack at the largest number of spots in every freshman class.
No one ever said that the college admissions process was fair. Somehow, though, there are a lot of people who think they heard a rumor to that effect. In 10 years of college teaching, and 10 years of higher education reporting I have drawn a simple conclusion: college officials do pretty much whatever they please with respect to admissions (and a lot of other things, too, but that’s a whole different can of worms). If someone with enough pull wants a particular individual admitted, a spot will be found.
The college admissions process has never been a truly race, gender, class, etc…blind process. Why should it be? How could it be? Because there are some people who want college admissions to be based on strict meritocracy? If that were the case, there would be a lot of academically under-prepared students with no hope of ever bettering their lives either intellectually or financially. Then again, as Dickens’s Scrooge puts it, “Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they still in operation?”
The University of Michigan recently won a lawsuit concerning its Law School’s admission policies. Minority students with slightly lower grades or LSAT scores were admitted ahead of non-minority students with higher grades and/or LSAT scores. Is this racial preference? You bet. Is this the most egregious example of using preference in the admissions process? Absolutely not.
Legacies are a factor in admissions. At many selective colleges, applicants may be shown preference if a parent is a graduate. George W. Bush benefited from that one. Why hasn’t anyone sued a college over the use of “legacyism” in admissions? College athletes are shown preference in admissions. Why not sue colleges for taking athleticism into account in admissions? Then, there’s the “donorism” preference factor. Development people identify parents of applicants who could be potential big donors. Guess what? A $250,000 dollar donation will buy a spot at just about any college in America. Why aren’t newspapers running pieces about the “dumb-ing down” of higher education as a result of “donorism?”
The legal attack against the use of racial preference in college admissions at the University of Michigan was nothing but smoke and mirrors to hide an ugly truth: white people want to keep preference all to themselves. However, thanks to the University of Michigan’s recent win at the Circuit Court level, everyone in America will have an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of preference in college admissions. Hail! to the victors valiant…Hail! Hail! to Michigan!
