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"Unvarnished." (Phi Beta Cons)
"Splendidly splenetic." (Culture Industry)
"Except for University Diaries, most academic blogs are tedious."
(Rate Your Students)
"I think of Soltan as the Maureen Dowd of the blogosphere,
except that Maureen Dowd is kind of a wrecking ball of a writer,
and Soltan isn't. For the life of me, I can't figure out her
politics, but she's pretty fabulous, so who gives a damn?"
(Tenured Radical)

Sunday, June 13, 2004

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June 13, 2004

[pls note: ‘gated’ correspondence]

TO: Undergraduate Oligarchs Consortium [for background, see UD 23 April and 24 May 04 ]

FROM: Josh

SUBJECT: A bit of buffeting…


Hello all. This week has seen more than a bit of buffeting for our organization. I want to bring some of this to your attention -- not because your executive committee is particularly daunted, but because it is important that we keep abreast of developments.

National Public Radio is emerging, rather astonishingly, as one of the stronger and more consistent voices against us. Not too long ago they interviewed David Kirb, a professor at Berkeley, on the subject of early admissions: “The only parents,” he commented, “who can play the early decision game are wealthy parents. [W]ealthier kids are going to the most prestigious schools. [D]umb rich kids get into college at about the same rate as smart poor kids.”

Which brings up the related storm clouds over Texas. On the front page of today’s New York Times an article notes that that state’s “10 percent rule,” in which the top 10 percent of all graduates of public or private high schools in Texas are guaranteed admission to one of the state universities, is “coming under increasing attack…as many wealthy parents complain that their children are not getting a fair shake.” The law is under threat, with some arguing for its abolition and others arguing for significant caps on the number of 10-percenters universities will have to admit.

We’re not getting a fair shake because the type of schools from which we tend to graduate have such high standards that it’s difficult to crack the top ten percent of them, whereas less burnished schools make that accomplishment rather easy. One parent whose son was not admitted to Texas at Austin remarks: “His class was two-thirds National Merit scholars and semifinalists. Their scores are all very , very high.” Barred from the University of Texas at Austin, this man’s son was forced to attend the University of Colorado at Boulder.

As the Times reporter notes, “Any change in the rule raises the touchy subject of class.” One public high school principal got very touchy indeed, telling the reporter that “The State of Texas has done a great thing by offering this opportunity to get our most gifted students into a challenging educational setting. And the rich people don’t want them there.”




Finally, there’s the op/ed piece by the novelist Dave Eggers, also in today’s New York Times [Week in Review, page 13], in which he proposes mandating that all college and university students (he suggests exempting community college students) do significant hours of volunteer work in the community during college. Eggers claims to have as it were pissed away much of his college years playing foosball, when he could have been, for instance, chatting with the elderly at an old age home.

Rather confusingly, Eggers suggests that students receive course credit for these activities. Which leads us to wonder in what way activities which are mandated, and for which people pay tuition, may be considered “volunteer.”

In any case, the UOC would propose an exemption from any volunteer requirement at colleges for people of means. Why? Because virtually all of us grew up in houses where our mothers and aunts always volunteered, often in very high-profile ways. Our parents sit on the boards of ballet companies; they organize dinners for a wide variety of charities; they hold auctions on behalf of our schools and churches and clubs. We already know - intimately - what it means to give back, and most of us certainly intend to include volunteer activities in our adult lives.