The logical question on looking at what is clearly a system rigged to admit non-white applicants—shown by a huge proportion of non-white (especially African-American) midshipmen with SAT scores below the level of 600, which is the with-some-exceptions LOWEST limit for competitive (white) applicants—will ask, how do they do it? Let me explain. I was on the Admissions Board in 2002-2003, and have confirmed from more recent members that these practices are unchanged, though some details have altered (for instance now Asians are a special racial group, as they were not 7 years ago).</p>
<p>First, this. The assumption of the outside world is liable to be that whatever the mechanism, it has to be legal, or the US Naval Academy (and the other service academies) wouldn’t be doing it. This is like saying, Pat Tillman can’t have died as a result of friendly fire, because the US Army is saying he didn’t. The Army was lying; Pat Tillman did die of friendly fire. The military misleads its civilian paymasters all the time. Similarly, when the inevitable lawsuit against USNA like the lawsuit against the University of Michigan in 2003 finally gets going, the ruling will have to be that what USNA (and other service academies) have been doing for years is quite illegal.</p>
<p>But how do they do it? Many people will assume that what papers over this racist and un-Constitutional practice is the thing called, at Annapolis, the WPM, Whole Person Multiple. This assumption probably comes from the fact that the Supreme Court held in the 2003 U of Michigan case that race could be considered not separately (as we do it) but as part of a whole package, just the way playing the ‘cello could be considered a positive commodity. (The assumption still was that, say, “African-American” means you see the world in a specific, and interesting, way, that will be enlightening to your fellow classmates: in an age of middle- and upper-class African-Americans this is highly questionable.) It fact it doesn’t; “how they do it” is precisely to essentially disregard the WPM for racial minorities and bring them a) over a lowered bar and b) through a separate door, called “direct” admissions. The WPM is in fact the good guy, and my argument has always been we should let it do its job for more than half the class.</p>
<p>What is the WPM? When someone applies to USNA the computer generates a WPM, in the days before women (i.e. pre-1976) called the WMM, Whole Man Multiple. This is a sophisticated logarithm that gives points via the computer for high school athletics, academics, and leadership, calibrated in a way a computer can calibrate: so many points for a certain GPA, so many points for upper 5% of class, so many points for a good high school (shown by the % of students going to 4-year colleges), so many points for team membership and more for captain, so many points for club membership and more for president, so many for Student Council or Government membership and more for office, so many points for SAT. Math is rated higher—it’s been given as much as 3x the weighting of verbal but I believe now is “down” to 2x, on the grounds that “we are an engineering school”—as we sometimes still hear. Yes, this is suicidal in the age of a brain-based counter-insurgency war, but we still do it. You get 500 points for being the child of an alumnus or an active duty service member, 500 points for a super essay, 500 points for a grade of l during USNA Summer Seminar. For competitive (white non-athletic recruit) students, the lowest we’re supposed to vote “qualified” is 58K (though the Superintendent can make any exception he chooses); a truly stellar WPM score is 70K (so 500 points isn’t much).</p>
<p>In fact we disregard the WPM for half the class: we generate it for all, then set it aside as irrelevant for the students we’re desperate to get. Athletic blue-chips and non-white minorities have a WPM but they are offered DIRECT admission typically with WPMs that would have resulted in white applicants being voted “not qualified.” The WPM does not have a “racial multipler”: it doesn’t have to, because it’s simply ignored for non-whites and team members.</p>
<p>The more important factor is that, in the briefing session at the Admissions Board, a self-identified minority applicant will probably be voted “qualified” for grades of largely Cs, with SAT scores down into the low 500s (remember 600 is usually the lowest score to get a vote of “qualified” for whites whereas a white applicant with the same scores will almost l00% of the time be voted “not qualified”). The minority applicant’s WPM doesn’t actually even matter, though it’s liable to be low 50Ks with these scores. They’re in. Even lower, and they’re in via a year at the hand-holding remedial school NAPS—which is filled with racial minorities with scores down to about 400 SAT, recruited athletes (same profile), and a handful of priors—and an even smaller handful of whites put into NAPS for political reasons. To repeat: low-performing whites are simply rejected: a white applicant with 450 SAT scores and not, say, a football player, will be rejected. NOT sent to NAPS. So NAPS (this year about 20% of the plebe class, 260 up from 204 the year before) is the other answer to “how do they do it?” If you say you’re Hispanic and can get 400 SAT scores and C grades (with no necessary athletics or leadership) you are coming to Annapolis via NAPS.</p>
<p>NAPS has become an embarrassment as the push to get in non-whites has intensified. In 2008 a whole trimester’s worth of (low) grades was thrown out because they would have doomed the students to a GPA of lower than 2.0, the minimum guaranteeing Annapolis acceptance. Besides, the 2.0 is regularly lowered either for the entire class or for individuals: once again Admiral Fowler, the current USNA Superintendent, has absolute deciding power on whether somebody comes to Annapolis or doesn’t, regardless of his GPA at NAPS. He personally goes to Newport to cook the books: he can’t be over-ruled, whatever his decision. NAPS had to introduce an even lower remedial level last year, and the CAPT in charge at NAPS was relieved of command; now the Academic Dean at NAPS has not had his contract renewed. Clearly they couldn’t make silk purses out of sow’s ears, so the USNA administration “lost confidence” (as the press reports had it) in them.</p>
<p>So, what use does the WPM have, except to eliminate low-level whites as not “qualified”? White candidates who are not also athletes or priors are never offered direct admission. Being voted “qualified” only means they are allowed to compete to win a “slate” of up to ten other applicants that (most typically) a Congress(wo)man has awarded nominations to. (Getting a nomination is a necessary but not sufficient condition of coming to Annapolis: we simply hand Secretary of the Navy “noms” to NAPSters and minorities direct-admitted; whites have to compete for them.) About half the time, the Congress(wo)man can name the winner of a slate (no reasons need be given, though many of them have their staff conduct interviews). In the other half of the cases, the highest WPM wins. So a white applicant with, say, a 62K WPM from a competitive state will still be rejected by not winning his or slate, while the self-identified (say) Hispanic with 52K got direct admission to USNA.</p>
<p>USNA hates to share this information: I was punished (I’ve filed a whistleblower complaint) for sharing this information with the world—and I’m tenured. Those in uniform or untenured civilians can’t open their mouths. It took a FOIA demand even to get the stats that show the clear two tracks based on race, above.</p>
<p>The WPM is the good guy. It gives points for smart studs with charisma (that’s the idea behind the three categories, anyway). But since we’ve already filled about half the class with team members and racial minorities (handful of priors too), they only have about 600 slots available to them. Since we get many more smart studs applying than 600, the others are rejected.</p>
<p>Bottom line: USNA works on a two-track admissions system which includes race as an absolute determiner. We have two sets of standards, two doors, and a taxpayer-supported remedial school, NAPS, that is not awarded to lower-track whites, who are simply rejected—and even higher-track whites, who come from competitive states and fail to win their Congressional slate.</p>
<p>Final point: the Commandant tried to explain the sudden increase in non-whites (27% to 35% between the Class of 2012 and the Class of 2013 as something beyond USNA’s control: as the result of the necessity for geographic diversity and the fact that Congress(wo)men can say who wins their slate. This is a total fabrication: minority candidates do not have to win their Congress(wo)man’s slate; they’re offered direct USNA admission or admission to NAPS. Minority admissions can all be from, say, El Paso and Oakland: there’s no necessary geographical spread in this at all. If you check one of the racial boxes and can write your name, you’re in, regardless of where you’re from. So that’s a lie too. Unless the Commandant really hasn’t been briefed on how it works?</p>
<p>So now we know “how they do it.” Why do they do it? I’ve speculated: they’re dinosaurs who think they’re being progressive in admitting and promoting to race, as if this were l968. My conservative friends assume that the conservative military would never do something like this on its own, but is either acting as a result of Congressional (i.e. liberal, bad) pressure, or to curry favor before the fact with that same liberal (bad) Congress. I don’t see this, and the military insists that this “sea change” belongs to them alone. What’s clear is that it’s decimated morale in the ranks and raised hackles against minority officers, now that the assumption now is (understandably) that they’re where they are because of their skin color: it’s a hugely destructive “solution” to an imaginary problem, namely the fact that about 40% of the enlisted corps in this time of an all-volunteer military and a bad economy are non-whites, and “only” 20% of officers are. So? We hear that volunteer military people only want competence, not skin color. Which—not to forget—is not a Constitutional reason for admitting or promoting.</p>
<p>The overall point to grasp is: in making its decisions, even if they’re illegal and destructive—as this race-based admission and retention policy is—the military thinks of itself as a special interest group whose livelihood is guaranteed by putting positive spin on events. It’s acting like a political party rather than the military of the entire society. For the record, this is a bad attitude, and hugely self-destructive, because it reduces civilian confidence in the military when the scandals finally break—as this one of race-based admission and retention finally has done. The military is once again “circling the wagons”—against the people they’re supposed to be protecting, and who pay their bills. Still, this “us vs. them” mentality with respect to the civilian world seems endemic to the military as currently constituted, and the defensiveness it engenders the source of the military’s greatest weakness (this is the subject of my upcoming book Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide).</p>
<p>But yes. Treating people differently based on their race is quite illegal. The Constitution says you can’t do it, and we’re doing it. And lying about it. With your tax dollars paying them to do it. Write your Congress(wo)man now. Write the Superintendent of the US Naval Academy. Write Senators McCain and Webb.
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