<p>Middlebury College is this year for the first time giving students who identify themselves as gay in the admissions process an “attribute” — the same flagging of an application that members of ethnic minority groups, athletes, alumni children and others receive, according to Shawn Rae Passalacqua, assistant director of admissions at Middlebury.</p>
<p>This apparently is the first time a college has openly adopted this policy... </p>
<p>Gadzooks, when will this end. I have some other suggestions for Middlebury in order to increase diversity.They should give admission preference to:</p>
<ol>
<li>Left handed males who preferably are good at ping pong</li>
<li>Handicapped people who have lost a limb, preferably one eye</li>
<li>Totally blind or deaf applicants</li>
<li>Those with either Aids or Diabetes</li>
<li>I am sure Middlebury doesn't have enough people from Bengladesh or Rowanda.
6.I would bet there are no students from Intercourse, Pennsylvania. Certainly more geographic diversity would be beneficial.</li>
</ol>
<p>I could go on and on.I am sure these additions would make Middlebury a more diverse place,but who really cares!</p>
<p>I dont think most colleges need to have AA for gay applicants
However after reading past articles re Middlebury, I can see why they might feel they need to</p>
<p>I suggest they give finanicial aid to families that make $70,000-$150,000/year.</p>
<p>Well the environment can't be all that bad for gay students, considering that Middlebury was named one of the 100 best schools for LGBT students.</p>
<p>And how exactly would they verify this status? <insert laughing="" emoticon="" here=""></insert></p>
<p>Good question. Now straight kids are going to "out" themselves in hopes of gaining an edge.</p>
<p>Exactly my thinking!</p>
<p>Considering that 20 or even 10 years ago, it would be difficult to even find 100 schools that you could place on a * gay friendly* list-
this is an accomplishment towards making colleges campuses a place where GLBT students can hope to participate fully on campus and not fear harrassment</p>
<p>I can just see it now:</p>
<p>-I'm bisexual... can I ethically check the "gay" box?</p>
<p>-I had a one night expermental fling with my boyfriend's sister. Can I check the "gay" box? </p>
<p>And that can go on and on...</p>
<p>But seriously, I don't understand this at all. Are gays otherwise discriminated against in the admissions process?</p>
<p>They shouldn't be- and I don't have any way of knowing if they are</p>
<p>However there are schools where gay students don't feel safe, where employees and students of a college feel they have to remain closeted, where at a time when young people should be not only getting good academic education, but feeling more confident about who * they are* and what is important to them, but instead are pressured to hide and deny a very important piece of their being.</p>
<p>By making a commitment to acknowledging a students orientation in the admission process, that school is making a statement, that students who are members of a sexual minority will not be discriminated against and are valued members of the student body
( of course what is on paper and what is in practice are different things- but making the statement is a start)</p>
<p>Actually, Middlebury is not making a statement that they will not be discriminated against, but rather that members of this group will be preferred. This of course could lead to more, and less, discrimination, insofar as the inevitable divisiveness that obtains with preferences will occur. And if the basis of the preference is sexual orientation, where does it stop? Does an avowed polygamist deserve a preference? </p>
<p>This is not to de-emphasize the importance of treating gay people fairly and with kindness and consideration. That should be an important principle applicable to all people at a university, with perhaps extra effort due and owing to gay people given their past treatment. But I fail to see how providing an affirmative admissions preference meets the stated objective of having gay people treated better, except, as with many programs that "progressives" love, it feels good emotionally. Hardly a basis, however, to make sound policy.</p>
<p>My kingdom for an edge! </p>
<p>As the shenanigans with the Common Data indicated, Midd does not seen too worried about integrity and respectability. This is simply more of the same.</p>
<p>Why not (for a change) take them at their word? Middlebury says they have been missing out on a "creative edge" that gay students often bring to the campus - for ALL students, not just gay ones. They look at Yale with its massive gay male population (last survey I saw some years ago more than double the percentage of gay male students as lesbians at the women's colleges), its internationally renowned gay/lesbian studies department, the huge (and disproportionate) role gay students play in the Yale arts community, and they'd like to capture some of its magic.</p>
<p>Whether they can do that, in rural Vermont, and among a much smaller student population, remains to be seen.</p>
<p>they had 5 students last year apply to Middlebury who identified in the process as "gay".</p>
<p>So while they likely have many more students who have a minority sexual orientation, it sounds like Middlebury wants to encourage them to "out" themselves in the application process which would give I suppose a rounder picture of the applicants ( and perhaps encourage more to apply?)</p>
<p>Oh mini, that's all we need - more divisiveness in the college admissions procedure. And saying that gays bring more creativity just strikes me as so much nonsense. If they want more creative kids why wouldn't they recruit theater kids or accomplished musicians? </p>
<p>Middlebury reports giving out $0 merit aid money to 0% of their kids. 49% receive any finanicial aid at all. I'd suggest they look at their endowment and use it to recruit a true mix of kids.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Passalacqua said that gay students bring “a unique quality” to the college, which he said tries hard not “to be too homogeneous.”
[/quote]
Yeah, right, at a school where most of the kids can afford to pay over $45K/yr.</p>
<p>I think they should be allowed to do whatever they want - it's their money. THEY (not I) perceived there was an opportunity in building a class they were missing, and decided to try to remedy it. That likely won't be true at many colleges, so they won't follow suit. Yale has had scholarships specifically earmarked for gay students for over a decade. </p>
<p>I imagine (but do not know) that lots of creative types don't apply to Middlebury not because of the lack of opportunities for their creativity (M. is, after all, a very rich place) but because of feeling (or imagining) a lack of support for their personal characteristics. So M. decided to address it head on. No panacea, and not so terrible either.</p>
<p>I think that colleges should be a safe haven for all kinds of students. But this sounds a little like forcing gay students to discuss a very personal aspect of their lives. Why should they have to "out" themselves just to gain an advantage? I think Middlebury is exploiting gay issues in order to obtain publicity for themselves.</p>
<p>mini - That's my point, there doesn't seem to be any money involved. Did it say in the article that they were offering gay kids scholarships?</p>
<p>I have one kid who "suffers" from severely red hair, and another who "suffers" from being severely tall. I mean, this can get ridiculous. </p>
<p>Bottom line - If schools like Middlebury genuinely want to diversify they have to start with true economic diversity. If they did that their student body would look like America. But they probably can't afford to.</p>
<p>They aren't attending not because they can't afford it (or so M. believes), but because there isn't a large enough "critical mass" for them to feel comfortable.</p>
<p>Looking back at my days at college in the Dark Ages (the college being all male at the time), I'm pretty sure that the school was around 10% gay. But there was only one "out" gay student in the entire school. Every year there were two or three suicides, usually occurring during Christmas or Easter breaks or over the summer, (the thought of returning to school being pretty much unbearable.) Now, a lot of these folks are out - and they include writers, tv actors, a state supreme court justice, dancers, AIDS activists, physicians, college professors. But their lives were mostly miserable at college (they will tell you so themselves) because the critical mass of support wasn't there.</p>
<p>M. has no "natural" advantages for providing that "critical mass" that Yale so easily provides. So they are trying something else, and I wish them good luck.</p>