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Here’s a question for you–does Columbia’s 29% Asians persuade you that Columbia, at least, isn’t doing anything illicit? After all, it’s more than the 15% “ceiling,” and it’s different from other Ivy League schools. If that doesn’t persuade you, what exactly would?</p>
<p>Fisher was dumb as a brick compared to the quality of students who attend UT to claim she was harmed while inferior students were admitted.</p>
<p>If they were going to fight UT, they should have used someone with a GPA over 4.0 and scores of 1300/1600. There are lots of those from high performing schools who don’t qualify from lots of schools in Texas. My kid’s school cuts off 8% at around 4.4 GPA with 4% qualifying for national merit last year. They probably had 100 kids better than Fisher in the last batch who did not qualify.</p>
<p>We should care particularly about the Ivies because…they provide unique entre into a few command centers of national wealth and power</p>
<p>Wow, I don’t think we should assume that all Ivies are out to produce national power brokers. I don’t think that is their evolved mission. (And, it would reduce the emphasis on STEM, wouldn’t it? All those researchers, engineers, profs, doctors and?) If the discussion heads that way, plenty I can say. For now, I’ll leave it at: one of the bottom line benefits to living and working together is the chance to learn about and learn from others, bringing down the figurative wall in the “us and them” thinking. Whether that wall is economics, race, religion, region- or even majors.</p>
<p>It’s true we’d have to learn why, eg, Cornell has a low % of Blacks. But, what we’re interested in on CC, as parents, mostly smart people, some professionals, some other- is different than our right to make pronouncements or our right to all the info. If the govt were concerned, I have no doubt they would pursue this, more than onesie-twosie. Like, what is the CC community supposed to do about all this? Besides hash it out and share?</p>
<p>“If they were going to fight UT, they should have used someone with a GPA over 4.0 and scores of 1300/1600.”</p>
<p>They did have another plaintiff with better stats who dropped out. I think this is they way they wanted it framed under the 10% auto admit. </p>
<p>If you look at Kennedy’s questioning it isolated the question to the race of the applicants.</p>
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<p>I’d agree. </p>
<p>Here is the original Bloomberg article from the beginning of 2012 that is referenced in the WaPo piece. It sisnt well written but the impaction is that Jian Li’s probe is continuing
[Harvard</a> Targeted in U.S. Asian-American Discrimination Probe - Bloomberg](<a href=“http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-02/harvard-targeted-in-u-s-asian-american-discrimination-probe.html]Harvard”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>"The agency is looking into a similar August 2011 allegation against Princeton as part of a review begun in 2008 of that school’s handling of Asian-American candidates, said the spokesman, who declined to be identified, citing department policy. " </p>
<p>From “looking” it implies that the 2008 case is ongoing. The current Californian of Indian extraction was joined to the ongoing probe and the implication is that their complaint against Harvard has been withdrawn. </p>
<p>Here is a Fisher story from Feb 2012 which makes it sound like Jain Li’s investigation is still going on. Again there is ambiguity about where Princeton has also had its complaint withdrawn by the unnamed California India-American:</p>
<p>"The U.S. Education Department is investigating such allegations at Princeton University, which says it doesn’t discriminate. The department dropped an investigation of Harvard University this month after an Asian-American student withdrew a complaint. "
[University</a> Affirmative Action Threatened by U.S. Top Court Admissions Case - Bloomberg](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>So I conclude that Office of Civil Right is still involved in bring swift justice to Jian Li. </p>
<p>But this does explain the swift uptick in Asian HYP admits from Unz numbers.</p>
<p>interesting thread</p>
<p>UT is kind of like Berkeley and people who are not sure about their prowess don’t want to go there and compete against the nerdier kids. So We see AA and hispanic valedictorians choosing to attend lower tier schools where they can stand out better. If the black and hispanic students choose to attend UT, there are plenty of them to go around to fill the seats at UT who are well qualified according to the 8% rule. </p>
<p>UT is filling some of the seats using their discretion because the qualified ones don’t show up. All they need to do is incentivize those already qualified to show up if they lose the case.</p>
<p>I find it amusing to think that the Jian Li probe, which has been dormant for years, has anything to do with an uptick of Asian admits at any Ivy League school. I don’t believe for a minute that those schools are afraid of that probe.</p>
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<p>I agree. The government has discretion in how seriously it chooses to investigate something and in whether it takes legal action. Arguments used to show discrimination against Asians would also be used to show discrimination against whites relative to URMs, and the Obama administration is not interested in such arguments.</p>
<p>"and the Obama administration is not interested in such arguments. "</p>
<p>Its a shame that people dont read the Unz article as he sums this up nicely as </p>
<p>" it could be summarized as a simple Leninesque question of “Who, Whom?”"</p>
<p>So when is that lawsuit being filed against Columbia -34% whites is definitely racial discrimination!</p>
<p>Ohhhh TEX! You are definitely not very nice. 
Unfortunately, I am unable to do anything about that since I apparently approved of you too recently.</p>
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<p>I think more information is needed. Do we know how many of the 29% are Asian Americans? Collegeboard reports 18% for last year (?)</p>
<p>It is plausible to me, that with pressures on colleges to increase their international/globalization <em>bragging</em> rights, Columbia (and others) are accepting more and more applicants from Asian countries, and as a result, are also feeling pressure to limit their total Asian enrollment by limiting Asian American admissions. This would not necessarily be due to any kind of animus towards Asian students per se, but rather due to their goals of maintaining a diverse <em>enough</em> student body. Either way, it could be unlawful discrimination.</p>
<p>Dare I say it? Yes, I will take the hit for making the “unattractive” argument: From a global perspective, it would be easier to justify a 30% Asian enrollment, than a 30% Jewish enrollment, which is the Hillel number reported for Columbia.</p>
<p>Thinking out loud here. I am not getting far in exploring what makes something discrimination vs a fair policy. Best I can get is that Pres Kennedy’s exec order against discrimination based on race, creed, color or national origin also noted, “it is the policy of the executive branch of the Government to encourage by positive measures equal opportunity for all qualified persons within the Government.” We know it moved beyond govt employment. I suspect the heart of the issue is “encouraging positive measures.” I don’t think that anyone has proven pervasive harm to kids not admitted. </p>
<p>One summary of Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003:
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that race could be used as one of several factors in professional school admissions without necessarily violating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The Court found that the University of Michigan Law School’s narrowly tailored policy which considered race and other factors, with no quota or predetermined weight associated with the factors, was constitutional and appropriate “to further a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”</p>
<p>Now, one could argue that that was that Court. True. And, law schools have been a bit different in that they acknowledged lowering the bar for minorities owing to the subtantially lower number of those applicants, at some point. (I generally stay away from the public law school issues because I don’t think they represent the UG argument.)</p>
<p>But, we can see the fine line. And, as we keep saying, when the apps outnumber seats 17 to 1 or 10-1 or even 4-1, there will always be challenges in putting together a class. Even among the 4.0 kids.</p>
<p>Texaspg: in her 1st interview since filing, Fisher: “I’m hoping,” she said, “that they’ll completely take race out of the issue in terms of admissions and that everyone will be able to get into any school that they want no matter what race they are but solely based on their merit and if they work hard for it.”</p>
<p>Maybe we need to force the schools to expand.</p>
<p>The whole idea of top 10% came from race elimination from the apps where they figured out there are enough minority dominant schools in texas to collect the top 10% from each school and come up with a racially diverse class at colleges without making race an issue. </p>
<p>"based on their merit " Merit must be in the mind. It is surprising how many jokes I have heard on the talk radio here which is pretty conservative and they do believe in the principle of eliminating race. They just dont think that app deserved an admission at UT.</p>
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Nope. They are completely different arguments, as I’ve tried to point out numerous times. The argument in the Jian Li case was not against URMs, but rather a claim that Princeton was limiting the number of Asians. As pointed out above, Grutter allows consieration of race for limited purposes. It would not allow a school to discriminate against a group because it didn’t want too many of them. The Fisher case may change some of this, but I’ll bet you it doesn’t do anything that significantly affects what the Ivies do.</p>
<p>Here is a blog post describing[The Obama Admins Parody Of Anti-Discrimination Policy.
John S. Rosenberg
December 10, 2012](<a href=“The Obama Admin’s Parody Of Anti-Discrimination Policy”>A “Demographic Gap”?).</p>
<p>‘The most dramatic of the three cases involves the University of Missouri, with its 34 scholarship programs that considered race or national origin as a condition for eligibility, and 18 more that considered students race or ethnicity as a plus factor in determining who received aid awards. Looking at this racially exclusive financial aid the racialist ideologues in the Office of Civil Rights Wrongs concluded that the universitys policy of reserving some of its aid programs exclusively for blacks and favoring them in others does not create an unduly severe or intrusive burden for students not eligible for such scholarships.’</p>
<p>^You couldn’t smell the scorn and mockery at 50 paces?</p>
<p>There remain finaid funds earmarked for minorities and women, just as those for musicians, math kids and outstanding records of community service endure. The greater issue would be if a majority kid were denied finaid entirely, in a meet full need context. Ime (and that’s just ime, at a private,) all the funds pool in the larger endowment and are part of the same money available for FA. Whether one kid gets what is called the Jones award and another gets what is called the Smith award- or no name at all- can be immaterial.</p>
<p>I worked on a large project to review each fund in the larger endowment and its legalities, identify which needed to have their donor specifications changed (by seeking approval from the state AG.) This goes hand-in-hand with a prominent lawsuit brought by descendants of a large donor, who claimed a U was using funds in ways other than specified by their relative. The U lost. So, to straighten these out requires govt approval/override. Ime.</p>
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Believe me, I get that some people are horribly outraged that black kids get a hand up, but I repeat that this is not at all the same thing as discriminating against somebody because you don’t like the color of their skin. The Office of Civil Rights found that those programs complied with the law as set out in Grutter. You don’t have to like it, but please, don’t get it mixed up with “too many Asians.” Not the same thing.</p>
<p>I would not be surprised if the outcome of Texas lawsuit goes against UT, they would institute similar scholarships to get the racial mix work at UTto get those already qualified to come.</p>