The Curbside Prophet

ipsadixit:

I have been flabbergasted by the gall that it takes to make an argument (while fully believing it yourself) that you can were not admitted to a university of your choice because of reverse racism. That’s pretty much her argument, right?

Admission process is brutal. You are working so hard to get a spot in this thing and when it doesn’t happen, you are willing to blame anyone and everyone for it. But blaming it on affirmative action in this day and age is the stupidest argument you could possibly come up with. And taking it all the way to the Supreme Court is even more stupid. But there is something else to this. There is a sense of entitlement, an intensified version of “special snowflake” syndrome. The fact that she is still unwilling to take responsibility for her action and how this is not someone else’s fault and was all in her hands, tells me that she was not and is still not ready to be a college student (even though she has graduated). 

I am looking at this from my own point of view. I didn’t go to high school in the US and had to transfer from a community college. I got accepted into some of the best schools in the country not because of my race or anything (while my personal history is very different, I check the box “caucasian” on my applications) but because I worked my ass off in the first two years i was in college. 

What my undergrad is going through now is a part of this problem. It’s a state school and with cuts all across the board, the student experience suffers. There are less classes, students have to pay more tuition and not as many students can get in. Since outlawing “affirmative action,” the population of my school has been looking very different. There is a lot less diversity on campus. Last year, an embarrassingly low number of students were accepted as undergraduate students because of rules like this. When you’re not allowed to look at certain things, you can only accept people on quantifiable  merit, in the form of GPA and/or scores. And that’s a big problem. 

At UCLA, one of the things that a school can look at is the GPA. Which is good for those of us that have a good GPA. But a good GPA is in no way the whole picture. It doesn’t tell you how much time this student has to devote to studying. It doesn’t tell you that they might have to hold down two jobs to make ends meet. When I went to my sister’s graduation (from a relatively small major) there was one black girl in over a hundred students. ONE!!! (there were a number of Asian, Indian and Middle Eastern students, so it wasn’t all WHITE PEOPLE!). 

If you think of college admissions in terms of LA, the problem becomes further complicated. There are several good schools, but the main cheap options are the UC system and the CSU system (I mean there’s the University of Spoiled Children, but the tuition is outrageous. I’m talking 200k). The CSU system is always seen as inferior to the UC system and getting an education in either school is getting harder because of funding cuts. At the same time, if you are someone that lives in an area where your monthly rent is not $2,000/month, your kid is probably going to go to a school where their reading level will be 3 grades behind peers who go to school in better area. This includes parts of Eastern LA and most of the South LA (South Central, Compton are some famous examples). One example, Crenshaw High school, has been in the news for just how bad it is. It lost its accreditation for a while. But students don’t have much of a choice, unless they can find a) move or b) register their kid through someone else’s address in order to get to a better school, which is not easy.

So the system itself is already putting these kids back. Contrary to popular belief, schools do not give an advantage to students that might come from a worse school. And do you know what happens to them when they finally get accepted? THEY GET SHUNNED BY THEIR CLASSMATES BECAUSE THE CLASSMATES THINK EXACTLY WHAT ABIGAIL FISHER THINKS. 

This is real. I have known many people that have had trouble blending in exactly because of this. In some extreme cases this has resulted in them not being able to finish their schooling because they cannot stand this fucked up environment any more.

Affirmative action does not exist any more. Misguided special snowflake syndrome does. 

(via supersoygrrrl)