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Boston Latin ordered to turn over data, notes on racial makeup of students admitted to Harvard

In a victory for an anti-affirmative action group suing Harvard, a federal judge this morning ordered Boston Latin School to produce all data and "all internal communications" related to any concerns at BLS about the racial composition of Harvard's admission policies - and to have one of its officials made available to discuss the issue under oath.

Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard in 2014 over alleged discrimination against Asian-American applicants. Earlier this year, the group demanded Boston Latin, which typically sends more students to Harvard than any other high school in the world, and which has a high percentage of Asian-American students, help it with its case by handing over everything related to its students accepted to Harvard.

Boston Public Schools asked a judge to quash the demand, arguing it is not a party to the suit and that any data about Harvard admissions could come from Harvard.

In her ruling, Judge Allison Burroughs agreed BLS should not have to compile and turn over any "documents or information that were prepared by or shared with Harvard." But, she continued:

BLS is hereby ordered to produce the following: (1) documents from the Relevant Period prepared by BLS concerning the racial composition of applicants, admitted persons, or enrollees to Harvard, excluding documents that merely aggregate statistical information; (2) all internal communications from the Relevant Period by or among BLS employees or agents regarding Harvards use of race in the admissions process; (3) any documents from the Relevant Period that describe any alleged discrimination by Harvard against persons of Asian descent in the college admissions process; and (4) all non-privileged communications during the Relevant Period concerning SFFA or this litigation. Furthermore, SFFA may depose a BLS representative. The motion to quash is otherwise granted. This is meant to minimize the burden on non-party BLS, while also ensuring the availability of information and the integrity of the discovery process.

A BPS spokesman said today: "We received Judge Burroughs's decision this morning and we are reviewing it to determine our next steps."

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Comments

But you should probably not do it in writing just in case you get a subpoena.

All internal communications? Any documents?

Did the judge just expand the scope of the request? Lawyering up backfired?

You have to expect there are at least a few emails saying something on the order of "I told Wayne his numbers were good enough if he were white, but..."

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The group was basically seeking everything, including notes kept by guidance counselors, related to kids accepted to Harvard. What the judge said was, they can get everything related specifically to racial issues, except the stuff that Harvard would probably have.

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Even if it were true, no one would write an email or a memo and say, "You won't get in because you are [insert protected group]."

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Yeah, I can just see the internal memos.

"Hey, Fred, I think Kim will be an excellent fit for the Harvard quota program."

"Judy, we need to pad the ___ demographic in this year's applicant pool."

Almost as sad as the thought of schools/businesses doing sketchy stuff is the thought that I've worked with people who would not have any problem doing those things but would be dim enough to leave a trail.

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I really don't see the place for exam schools in an ed system that makes the claims of equality which Boston does.

BLS and Harvard have admissions policies which are mostly sorting and selecting, not ability.

The college admissions process is a competitive monster that twists itself into pretzels to avoid evidence of racism even though its outcomes qualify as racist. This mangling of meaning and sincerity then extends downward into high school and even earlier.

Higher ed admissions is based on the idea that competition will yield superior results. It must now be obvious that competition leads to a relentless pursuit of sameness in the quest for a safe job at a zeroes and ones factory. Let's get off this track.

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Many people disagree with the concept that "outcomes" can be racist, sexist, or discriminatory. It represents civil rights going overboard to where they become civil entitlements.

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Discovery of racism is the main weapon that the white professional class uses to attack the white working class.

The white professional class has attempted to enforce equality of black people with the white working class. As I outlined earlier, it is this equality which causes hostility and jealous rivalry. The white professional class does not feel threatened by black people. Why? Because they do not consider black people their equal!

If your interpretation is correct, then that simply reflects that the white professionals have set the rules of racism in such a way as to justify continued inequality in results, while they can avoid the thoughts and attitudes that could get them condemned.

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you outlined what exactly? All schools should have a lottery admission? Like even MIT or Harvard Med?

And yes, I tend to 'attack' people for being racist. And? If you're pining for the plight of poor mis-understood white voter from the Midwest there are maybe 10,000 articles written since the election clarifying how nothing is their fault.

I'm also morbidly curious about your theory that equality causes hostility and jealous rivalry. Does that mean we shouldn't strive for it? Is your solution is minorities should just know their place? Or we shouldn't try to lift up disadvantaged people because other people might get mad? Race in America has always seemed like an exceptionally difficult issue to resolve going to back the failure of the Reconstruction but it's cool that you've got it all figured out.

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They're racist all right. Never said they weren't. You may just in a position where you don't have to be officially racist but you don't have to deal with or compete with black people. That's where I am anyway.

The understanding of conflict and race however is far from reality, and feeds on itself. It will never be solved if we continue this way.

Karl Marx says inequality causes conflict. If this was true then the poor would be killing the rich primarily. The evidence however is that real hatred, killing and jealousy, happens among people who are more equal than not. The Marxists such as the Frankfurt School have to make excuses for this behavior, finding false consciousness etc. basically trying to explain why killers and haters are attacking the wrong target.

An alternative explanation called mimetic theory is that because humans are imitative creatures, we want what the people close to us have. But the resource, especially the best thing (best girl, best house, spot at BLS, spot at Harvard) is limited, so we focus on that more and more and it becomes the center of our rivalry. Eventually we lose sight of the object and become focused on the competition to the exclusion of everything else.

So you see how more equality leads more people to desire the same things. I don't doubt that there were at one time historically black colleges with professors as good as the ones at Harvard and kids as smart as the Harvard kids. Now that we have basically got rid of those things, everyone instead, blacks, whites, asians etc all became focused on Harvard, way beyond what is justified by the quality of education there.

Are there ways societies use to control the conflicts? Yes. And I will tell you if you can stop being a smarty.

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The pool on when EM Painter would invoke Karl Marx is now closed.

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on invoking Marxism?! Goddamn, and here I've been restraining myself like a chump.

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You haven't answered if schools should simply have lottery admissions.

Mimetic theory sounds like simplistic nonsense. Sure, we all want a nice place to live and a good job and healthy, happy kids, etc... To view that as a the problem to be solved is ass backwards. The alternative to striving for equality of opportunity is what, a caste system? Pass.

You do realize that in today's increasing multi-cultural world, you eagerness for racial hierarchy is wildly out of date right? You have now argued twice for black and Asian people to be treated in a specifically different way than their white peers in the name of social harmony. My kid has more multi-racial friends than I ever did at his age and that trend isn't stopping.

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Come back when your internet score reaches a million

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The ruling class encourages ethnic, religious, and other conflict among workers because it prevents workers of all groups uniting against the ruling class. This is one of the oldest strategies in the book, and it allowed the British to conquer and rule India for some two centuries.

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... because there's a core of truth there.

Busing in the 1970s? In addition to, or in parallel with, a sincere desire to correct racial imbalances, there was also an element of smugness in the white professional class -- there was joy in sticking it to Southie and watching the damage unfold. Even, perhaps, to some, an element of revenge for Curley.

Southie being assholes didn't help; Louise Day Hicks and the like were not savvy enough to get much traction out of the class aspect of it, and so everyone focused instead on them being racist (which they were, too). Southie had pissed off the lefties who would otherwise have been their natural allies on the class warfare aspect.

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...was forced busing. It alienated vast numbers of working-class voters from the Democratic Party and may have made Ronald Reagan President. It certainly won Massachusetts for Reagan. It hurt cities by encouraging white flight; it never delivered the benefits to African Americans it was supposed to deliver.

The real problem wasn't where kids were going to school; it was how schools were -- and largely, still are -- funded. If you live in a rich town, you have excellent schools; if you live in a less affluent one, or in one of the blighted former industrial cities, you're out of luck. The dollars, not the kids, should have been the focus. Forcing social reform at gunpoint rarely results in anything good, and always triggers a backlash. The Democratic Party, and indeed the whole country, is still paying for that mistake today.

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How would you have dealt with school systems that refused to follow the laws for decades and demanded that their illegal, toxic, racist, and defiant behavior be given special rights?

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You mean, the people who are too dim to understand that they are being replaced by robots and that maybe, just maybe, they should buckle down and study up?

Oh, but then they'll be like girls ... and girls only do well in school because of misandry ... yeah, always the excuses with you losers when you have to compete with people who bust their ass to come from behind and have a decent live, isn't it? So much easier to use that hand to hold people down and complain when someone else gives them a hand up to compensate for your hate and fear and utter laziness.

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Success comes more often from being in the right place at the right time than from "busting one's ass" more than the next person.

I'll give you an example: when I was in college in the 1970's, there was a small group of people associated with the college radio station who had started a computer software company. They wrote software for Digital Equipment Corporation minicomputers (DEC was a major employer based in Maynard). There was fellow in my dorm who was writing software for 8080- and Z-80-based microcomputers. My friends turned up their noses at those and called them toys. My friends "busted their asses" just as hard as that other fellow did, but you've never heard of any of them because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Minicomputers weren't the future; DEC, Wang, Data General, and Prime Computer are all out of business today.

That other fellow, writing software for "toys"? His name was Bill Gates.

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...maybe your friends writing for DEC just weren't that good? maybe they were busting their asses, but just weren't brilliant? i'm not saying that right place right time doesn't play a role, but you also need to be the right person that those circumstances are weighted towards.

my dad was at data general in the 1970's and later, and he got financially set and pretty famous from his time there. by most people's metrics, he was definitely a success.

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You mean, the people who are too dim to understand that they are being replaced by robots and that maybe, just maybe, they should buckle down and study up?

And that right there is the condescending smugness people have been talking about, the attitude that fuels the entire worldwide populo-fascist backlash we're seeing right now.

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That right there is the reality of the modern world.

The whole "white working class" thing is code for a combination of smug entitlement and delusional thinking.

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I know dozens of former factory workers who retrained, moved, and did what they needed when their jobs were going away. That's called adaptation.

Then there are the people who chose not to retrain, who chose not to take jobs in sectors where there were jobs because they didn't want to get their hands dirty doing "women" work, who refused to move away to find work, who refused to face reality of the changing job market.

That's called denial and willful stupidity. Now they want to be rewarded for ignoring reality.

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We had an exam school 30th reunion the other night. We had cops, mailmen, CFO's, teachers, nurses, stay at home moms, affordable housing advocates, lawyers, doctors, consultants, graphic designers, fitness instructors, engineers, health care administrators, book editors, house builders, stay at home dads, salesmen, a barista, the priest and the nun (not a couple) did not make it unfortunately.

The upside was that we worked like hell and almost hell for 4 to 6 years depending on admission status and we were all better for it.

Some of us actually learned a lot over those years, way over what another school could offer.

We also are straight, gay, married, divorced, single, deeply religious, atheist, cancer survivor, we have lost some to cancer, White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and in some cases a mix of one or two of them.

We are not monotone Financial Services types, but we all seemed to like DJ Rob Base and Michael Jackson music though.

Save the All Kids Are Above Average crap for Lake Wobegon. The Exam Schools bring out the best in the teenagers in this city. Either get on the bus or stay by the roadside. The City is a better place with them.

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I went to the OTHER Latin school and was in the last class of girls. This was before the quotas were enforced.

We worked like dawgs to get through 6 years. No snowflakes allowed. Like you, we have a broad spectrum of professions. Our racial makeup reflected the city at the time, African-Americans and West Indians from Mattapan, Roxbury and Dorchester, Chinese from Chinatown, Italians from East Boston, Irish from West Roxbury and Dorchester, etc. People of color were well-represented in classes ahead of us and behind us.

All of my classmates were truly gifted and extremely intelligent, and in many cases, geniuses, if not mere brilliant.

Then, the quotas were enforced and both schools went co-end. Kind of sad. It watered down the brand. That's progress, I guess.

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Perhaps you gave up caring, but there are no quotas at the exam schools anymore

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I'm sure Harvard reunions are positive experiences too, there should be a way for students at other high schools in Boston to gain as much social worth. From what I have observed there is a huge drop-off below the BLS/BLA.

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It is amazing what you can pull off by doing the work.

You want a hand out, move to Cuba.

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Didn't say everybody should get into Harvard or everybody should go to BLS

Students should not risk getting beat up or robbed going to the other high schools. And you know that's one reason why parents want their kids in the exam schools.

Why do we accept that only those who achieve at certain academic subjects should be assured as far as safety and social recognition goes ?

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[citation needed]

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Of course it's arguable that public school systems should not have magnet/exam schools. But most cities larger than 150,000 people or so appear to have them, so it's not like there's a lot of will to get rid of them.

The best alternative is to include a neighborhood criteria in exam school admissions. So half the seats are assigned by ward/precinct, for example.

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...then the answer isn't to close BLS but to give the other schools the budget and the resources they need to solve the problem.

People are so obsessed with taxes, even in supposedly progressive Massachusetts, that they don't want to pay what it costs to get the services they need. The schools don't work; the T doesn't work; bridges are falling down; yada yada yada. There is an answer: spend what it costs to do the job right, and if you don't want to pay the taxes, New Hampshire is just an hour away.

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"Hard work" never got anyone anywhere without a whole lot of other things going right at the same time, and the only people invoking that tired old trope are the ones who were born on third base and think they hit a triple. My wife's school, and the middle school around the corner from me, are full of kids who are busting their asses harder than you or I will ever do, and they're not all going to see the inside of an Ivy. You can disagree that affirmative action is the way to address structural inequality, but can we please skip the Horatio Alger bullshit?

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We had only 2 Beacon Hill grads in our class, no one from the Back Bay, a lot from the then still really scary South End, a lot of Dot, pre-gentrified JP, East Boston, Brighton, West Roxbury, Mattapan, Charlestown (More Townie than Toonie by a mile then), Chinatown, and more kids from single parent houses than you would think and quite a few from the projects.

Rid yourself of your pre-conceptions please. Some of us who actually did the work have received the benefits.

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Admit it, there were a lot of kids from West Roxbury in your graduating class.

Not faulting any of them (except for their choice of music, of course) but the West Roxbury orientation has been around since it shifted from Blue Hill Ave. in the 50s.

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Get real, my kid goes to a majority black school. Very few of this classmates are going to BLS for a variety of reasons. He's on a majority white Parkway sports team. They're pretty much all going to BLS. The truth is somewhere between true meritocracy that you present and the Tito Jackson narrative of systemic prejudice at the school.

Here's my BLS race question - did the increased effort to promote the school and the test prep among minority* students across the city make any impact on the admission rates this year? That was a big deal last year if we all recall.

* as always with BLS, minority meaning black/hispanic, not Asian.

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Ironically, METCO counts Asians as minorities. If you're Indian and in Boston you've got a shot to go to enroll at Weston.

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Are buried on page B4 of today's Glob, following the headline "Diversity Progress at BLS Disputed."

This fall, there is a 21% increase in the number of black and Latino students who have accepted entrance into an exam school as 7th graders. The number of black and Latino students accepting entry as ninth graders for this fall has increased by 153%.

62 percent of black students and 68 percent of Latino students who attended the expanded Exam School Initiative last summer were admitted to an exam school.

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So yay? That's also considering the implosion of high school aged kids in the city.

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You must have an idiosyncratic definition of "progress" if movement in the desired direction doesn't meet it.

Tell us more about the implosion of high school aged kids in the city. Is it contagious?

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To be clear, there has been a huge drop in high school aged kids in Boston per the census. I think this has hit the parochial schools harder than BPS to date.

I only say seems because I don't know what the overall trends are and if this is a one year uptick or the start of a prolonged improvement.

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Rid yourself of your pre-conceptions please.

Healer, heal thyself.

Some of us who actually did the work have received the benefits.

Some of you, yes. Specifically, the ones for whom work and circumstance aligned perfectly, and who weren't working full-time when they should have been in high school, or trying to take the SSAT after gunfire kept them up all night.

Crediting "hard work" as the sole reason for success is the ultimate American fantasy of meritocracy, but it's just that: magical thinking. For every hard-working guy who pulled himself up by his bootstraps, there are a dozen kids who rolled up their sleeves, did the work, and still couldn't escape circumstances. There are also a dozen white kids whose last name got them into prep school, and who rode a 2.5 GPA to a cushy job at the firm.

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I have been out of work for 2 days since I was 15. I worked everyday after school and tried to pick up as much weekend work as I could.

Stop with your horse dropping justification that you read about in your sociology textbook. You sound like a Lifetime movie directed by Bill DiBlasio.

Also, those who I grew up with who deiced that drinking in the park or getting knocked up at 16 was a better lifestyle choice, they are living with their choices today.

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And yet the fundamental justification for exam schools in our country's great cities is helping kids who were born without great advantages to take those seats and jobs away from the prep school slackers.

Mobility is very low in our country, but that's not a justification for reducing it further.

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Non-white women would be running the world.

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we all seemed to like DJ Rob Base and Michael Jackson music though.

And lest you think this is an age thing, I'm a few years off from my 30th. Rob Base? And you freely admitted to this. I mean, Michael Jackson had Thriller, so that's something. But Rob Base?

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That's just stupid. I mean, outrageous.

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Sooooooo much better than Thriller.

June 89 was peak Rob Base if you must know. It was good and bad. It was Chinese Students getting crushed with tanks and America Wanting to Rock Right Now.

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I'm sorry, did you just criticize someone else for mangling of meaning? I'll assume you're sincere...

Does Boston make claims of equality, or of equality of opportunity? Any kid starting kindergarten this year in Boston might end up at Latin in 2024, and might be the valedictorian at BLS, with a full ride to Harvard, in 2030. And it won't cost his family a penny. That's something you want to take away, so that a kid from elsewhere can take that spot, and call it more equality? I'm not sure everybody wants what you're selling. I don't.

How are sorting and selecting irrelevant to ability? Isn't ability what colleges are supposedly sorting and selecting for? That's what this whole lawsuit is about, the idea that some of the sorting and selecting veers away from the ability we presume is the basis of the sorting and selecting. If that weren't the understood idea, there'd be no lawsuit.

Who says that higher ed admissions are intentionally competitive just to make high school students improve themselves through the competition? That's kind of a conspiracy theory. College admissions are actually competitive mostly because more people want a commodity than can have it. If kids didn't want the spots so much, there wouldn't be much difficulty getting them, and the competition would be relaxed.

And what's wrong with a zeroes and ones factory? I worked at one for a long time, and I made lots of zeroes. If you think that's so terrible, don't do it. But trying to prevent kids who go to public school in Boston from participating in competitive college admissions or getting into well-paid professions isn't helping them. It's taking out your own frustrations on them.

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First off, Boston is ready to tar and feather some guy for saying a bad word at the ballpark, but then lets the generally sad state of black people continue along with a few goodies tossed their way. It's hypocritical. I happen to think there is some reality to the difference but I'd like it attended to and solved. Not going to happen by letting a few black kids into Latin or Harvard.

Second, the way to change for the better, in products or people, is not to do the same thing everybody else does.

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You need to work on a self-image that doesn't rely on being "special" because you are a white male.

Nobody in Boston or in the country or even planet is required to keep up that charade to protect your tender snowflake feelings.

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so long as it's based on actual qualifications and performance and not, say, your accent or where you summered or prepped or whether granddad was a partner in the firm ;-)

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"Whites", or European-Americans, are an ethnic group, like Puerto Ricans, Brazilian-Americans, or Chinese-Americans. There is actually more than one "white" group, just as there is more than one "Hispanic" group. The United States is something like the old Austro-Hungarian empire, many ethnicities living under a common sovereignty, not "one nation under God, indivisible". When one group perceives that it is being treated less favorably than another, conflict arises. As with many social conflicts, it is the perception that matters. The media, who largely create public perceptions in this country, bear a lot of responsibility, I think.

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Because your hole gets funnier the deeper it is. "The generally sad state of black people?" Really?

Your argument is a delirium of nonsense. You are advocating shutting down Boston's exam schools, and making Boston's high schools more similar to each other, because the way to change for the better is not to do the same thing everybody else does. And you don't see the contradiction.

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psycobabble behind the Bell Curve and or eugenics.

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I don't know how to think and I can't be expected to do research (homework), so I'm just going to stand here and yell "THINKING IS STUPID AND REALITY AND FACTS DON'T MATTER" and
"YOU CAN'T MAKE ME THINK OR READ BECAUSE THAT'S REVERSE RACIST"!

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They're not anti affirmative action, they're anti racist admission criteria.

Affirmative action: Increase minority enrollment by investing more heavily in recruiting from predominantly minority schools, neighborhoods, towns. Convince minority kids and their parents, "You may never have thought of a place like Harvard, but if you've got the academic chops, it's for you. Check us out." Provide support through the application and admission process for kids whose parents didn't go to college, whose high school college offices are understaffed and overworked and unfamiliar with Harvard, and who wouldn't otherwise have anyone to go to, to learn how to deal with such a place.

Racist admission criteria: Increase minority enrollment by lowering the standard for applicants from historically underrepresented minority groups.

The second is, of course, the cheap, lazy way out, and the path that many institutions took. It has pernicious effects (minority students looked down on as, "you are only here because of AA; you wouldn't otherwise make the cut," and the like) The first one is more expensive, but Harvard can surely afford it.

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They can't call themselves "anti-affirmative action" unless they also include legacy admits in their sights.

Something tells me that isn't something they are interested in ending.

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"legacy" admits is the biggest AA program there is. And our universities are generally the worse for it.

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Someone once pointed out to me the fallacy of the supposedly meritocratic approach of accepting the top n candidates, regardless of anything. Wouldn't it make more sense instead, this person argued, to look at ALL candidates who are good enough according to whatever measurable criteria you're using to evaluate who the "top candidates" are, and then looking beyond what you can easily measure and quantify to see what candidates can best contribute to your institution?

Until you get specific about what "the standard" is and its functional usefulness, your argument can't stand.

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I know a very elite private high school that does what you describe. They are looking for kids who are wicked smart, but then who also bring something with them that makes the school better. Sometimes that's a great athlete, or a kid who does ballet, or another who acts. As you say, having just the smartest kids isn't always the best thing for the kids or the school.

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A family member did some admissions work at a NE prep school and that's correct. Diversity of experience and background is much more valued these days vs. back even 40 years ago. Money is also less important because the endowments are so big and alumni support so deep.

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Read The Price of Admission.
Still relevant.

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There is a basic level of qualification that must be met.

Those applicants go into a pool of potential applicants.

Then promising ones are identified within that pool of those who are qualified. Promising means that they work hard and achieve and seem ready for the challenges of college.

Scores and grades QUALIFY you for that pool, they generally do not RANK the pool.

That's because those with the best scores and grades may not be socially developed or mature. They also may be "products" of driven parents where any actual sense of what they want or how they feel or if they can succeed on their own is lost.

That's why colleges like Harvard jump to take highly qualified students who have had to strive over yet another trust fund baby product of an elite private school - if anyone wants to be there, if anyone can excel at college without a lot of support and coddling, it's that kid with the high SATs from an urban exam school who also worked a couple of jobs, worked in an internship, and spent time helping to raise their siblings while mom and dad were at work.

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discovery is doing so on behalf of asian students? What is inarguable is that asians are minorities. Asians are not treated as such for the purpose of diversity efforts. Isn't this the crux of the issue?

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The crux of the issue is the allegation that Asian students are discriminated against, compared to white students - that two students with identical test scores, grades, activities, etc. have different probability of admission based solely on one being white and the other being Asian. Per the numbers, the SAT scores of Asian kids are discounted 140 points in admissions.

Here's some background on the matter from the Economist.

The complication is the possibility that this lawsuit on behalf of Asians is the tip of a wedge intended to break Affirmative Action entirely so that colleges like Harvard are forced to stop discriminating against white and Asian students in favor of Black and Hispanic students, as well as discriminating against Asian students in favor of white students.

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https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/application-process/what-we-look

Fixating on these is futile, as they don't soley determine merit, achievement, or likelihood of success past a minimum threshold.

People want to buy their kids a spot at Harvard, and Harvard is pushing back on that by looking for things that cannot be bought. So the polishers are suing based on quantitative things that can be bought rather than qualitative evidence that a student has drive and shown achievement on their own terms.

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The entire edifice of "holistic " admissions at the Ivies was concocted as a scheme to keep Jews out. Harvard started "pushing back" against a tide of intellectual Hebrews, not against a tide of spoiled little WASPs. Now the same system is used against Asians.

We are talking about Asian kids who grew up elbow to elbow with white kids who have worked less hard and accomplished less than them, and whose college applications were nonetheless favored. Kids who can now hire specialized de-Asianification college admissions counselors.

One fascinating aspect of this subject is how good ideas can be invoked on both sides of the argument. You bring up lofty ideals, which have long been used to secure white, Christian privilege.

Parents can still buy admission for their kids, just not the way middle-class Asian strivers try to. Legacy admission is how you jump the line. Alumni donations count more than SAT scores.

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Are also used to the same effect.

Look into the research on test scores: "achievement" tests are most heavily and robustly correlated with parental income and education levels. Colleges have also found them to be somewhat underwhelming as predictors of academic success - let alone ability to handle college life (maturity, self-sufficiency, etc.)

Test scores are no different than more qualitative indices in that regard.

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So you are now arguing that, given the same test scores, accomplishments, and grades, that you think white kids are more likely to have more maturity and self-sufficiency, etc. than Asian kids.

Mighty white of you.

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should they be considered a primary source for background. If theZak is paying attention he'll post a link to the court filing...

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Even if you have blue eyes, blonde hair and "high cheek" bones, just check off Native American and sail right through. Only 1/32 Native American? It doesn't matter. You might even get elected to the US Senate. Tell them "Mami and Papi" told you.

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stealing his material.

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... At a rolling rubber donut, lying fake cop.

You have been told REPEATEDLY by those of us who have worked for Harvard that your "hiring preference" nonsense is utter bullshit and not at all how the annual diversity survey works.

Grow up or just go to hell ... Or just gaze in adoration at your "Reagan National Airport passport stamp" or your social security number or something. I don't care.

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In all seriousness, "refusal to take anyone else's bullshit" is way, way up there on my list of desirable personality traits......

.... but you can do that without being gratuitously offensive, too.

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Is gratuitously offensive. Nice words used to express it don't cover it.

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... he'll just drag you down to the mud where he lives and then beat you with experience.

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There are a whole lot of people who deserve the benefit the doubt, and/or the assumption of good faith. We should treat those folks with dignity, and keep the conversation civil. Some folks, however, have frittered away that good will by consistently refusing to act in good faith, and I see no reason to try to humor them when they certainly won't return the favor.

FISH, for example, is a walking turd-in-the-punchbowl, and every thread he graces with his presence is worse for the experience. This is a man who has clearly suffered from a lack of people telling him to go fuck himself throughout his blinkered, bigoted life, and I aim to right that terrible wrong.

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This is a man who has clearly suffered from a lack of people telling him to go fuck himself throughout his blinkered, bigoted life, and I aim to right that terrible wrong.

That's entirely possible.

There's an equally possible explanation, consistent with a lot of modern psychological theory, is that such personality disorders result from a lack of affection shown to the individual during childhood. (and, sadly, that there's little you can do in adulthood to remedy it.)

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Clearly Fish is driven to his worldview by all the equality he sees around him with people of different races.

Mimetic theory, what a hilarious pile of nonsense...

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Adorable.

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Here we go again with discrimination at the 1 luxury school Boston may have.
I remember when my children graduated from Latin. I remember saying to my kids " it could of been you guys with scholarship's"
I don't remember ever thinking they were being discriminated against. They were lazy and the qualified weren't. Simple as that.
Who could I blame???

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