LOLOLOL

70% of Harvard’s donor-related and legacy applicants are white, and being a legacy student makes an applicant roughly six times more likely to be admitted.

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[E]lite places become these little islands where rich people pass down their advantages to their kids. They marry each other. They invest massively in their kids. Their kids then go to these exclusive schools. They move to the same few metro areas. And people who don’t grow up in these kinds of resource-rich families are really left behind. We’ve created a caste society based on who gets into what exclusive colleges.

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After the death of affirmative action as (per SCOTUS) unfair preference, the complex business of legacy admits seems also to be circling the drain.

The word “legacy” covers not merely people admitted to selective schools because close relatives attended; it also can involve super-rich people donating (or likely to donate) multiple millions to buy a seat at these schools for their children. And it can have to do with talented athletes (most of them from expensive private secondary schools) admitted for their athletic rather than academic skill. It usually exhibits a mix of some of these elements.

Let’s look at a notorious case that in fact contains every one of these elements.

George Huguely, currently rotting in jail for killing his ex-girlfriend, was a legacy admit to the University of Virginia. “George III, George V’s grandfather, went to Sidwell Friends and the University of Virginia.” A friend of Huguely’s at the expensive, prestigious prep school he attended comments: “He was not a great student, but he didn’t care.” He was a great lacrosse player.

A hopeless alcoholic from a young age (Huguely’s father showed him how), Huguely boasted several booze-related arrests, including a quite serious one in Lexington, Virginia while he was a UVa student:

Officer Rebecca Moss discovered Huguely wobbling drunk into traffic near a fraternity at Washington and Lee University. She told him to find a ride home or face arrest. He began screaming obscenities and making threats. [Apparently he said “I’ll kill all you bitches.“]

“Stop resisting,” Moss said. “You’re only making matters worse.”

Moss and another female officer tried to subdue Huguely. He became “combative,” the police chief reported. Moss stunned him with a Taser, put him in a squad car, and took him to the police station.

At his court hearing a month later, Huguely said he didn’t remember much about the night and apologized. He pleaded guilty to public swearing, intoxication, and resisting arrest. He was fined $100 and given a 60-day suspended sentence.

Huguely bragged about the incident to [UVa] friends…

Some of these friends were, like Huguely, part of a drunk, entitled, obnoxious sometimes to the point of violence, rich lacrosse player culture where you don’t rat out buddies even if you know they’re really really dangerous and out of control. One assumes most of these friends laughed drunkenly along with Huguely as he detailed the latest incident in which he got away with… not murder. Not yet. But things were escalating, and some of his friends certainly knew he was threatening his ex-girlfriend and assaulting people he thought she was dating and just being a really scary violent crazy piece of shit.

It’s certainly worth asking what sort of subculture sees all of this and does nothing. It’s certainly worth asking how a non-academic, violent, total alcoholic with a criminal record was rewarded with an extremely competitive seat at one of the nation’s greatest universities. What did his prep school teachers and coaches, many of whom must have known or guessed how incredibly dangerous he was, write in their letters of recommendation about him? (Think also about poor drunk well-connected short-lived Paul Murdaugh, still a student in good standing at the University of South Carolina despite having recently killed a young woman and injured others while drunkenly at the helm of a family boat. Like Huguely, he already had a bunch of booze-related run-ins with police.

Two months after he was sprung from jail, a judge removed the only condition of his release — allowing him to travel outside the 14th Judicial Circuit, according to the news outlet.

Although he faced BUI charges, the state did not restrict him from drinking alcohol or driving a boat, the report said.

Another entitled rich kid given one free pass after another until… Well, one can’t help feeling for Paul Murdaugh. His own father murdered him.)

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“I was drinking a lot all the time, all the way from my freshman year to my senior year,” Huguely said at his trial. “I was drinking all the time. It was out of control.”

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Look. My point isn’t that legacy admits are murderers and degenerates. Most of them are pleasant well-meaning non-Ivy League material. But there’s a really anti-social pathology underlying the culture of lifelong consequence-free unearned social rewards of which some (not all) legacy admits are Exhibit A. The Varsity Blues criminal syndicate, and whatever current bogus athletics conspiracy has replaced it, is merely the crude extension of the basic legacy M.O. The socially acceptable con game of legacy admits makes the world safe for the scandal of Varsity Blues.

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And can you think of anything more morally corrosive than knowing that your corrupt parents and a corrupt institution engineered your sorry ass into a seat at Harvard? Knowing that you’re little more than a cold hard cash epiphenomenon to the institution – does that bother you at all? Does it feel like a prefiguration of your entire entitled life? Here’s a bunch of nice people getting me into Harvard; here’s a bunch of nice people showing me how to evade taxes. And so it goes.

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The tragedy of wealth-based admissions is that wealthy students are taking up seats from the poor, unconnected students who need them most. This is not a victimless crime.

…  [C]ollege leaders … sell access while squatting on multibillion-dollar endowments and spending vast sums of money on palatial campus buildings, leadership compensation, and administrative bloat.

And you’re paying for it:

… If a donor earns seven figures a year and lives in California, taxpayers can wind up subsidizing more than 52 cents of every dollar used to buy his child’s way into college. Even in states with less exorbitant tax rates, taxpayers routinely pick up more than 40% of the tab. That’s because these kinds of donations are wholly tax deductible: As long as there’s no explicit quid pro quo agreement, the IRS allows parents to write off their influence-peddling donations in full.

… Offering a special admissions track to the wealthy on the taxpayer’s dime impedes equal opportunity, rewards influence peddling, and robs the public. It’s time for a change. Colleges and universities should be places of opportunity, not institutions where background or wealth determine success. Wealthy applicants should have to earn their place in a university by the same rules as everyone else.

… We should press college officials to mean what they say about opportunity and equity, and to spend less time strong-arming wealthy donors. But at a bare minimum, we should get taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing campus shakedown artists.

And when I say pathology: Harvard is currently squatting on 53 billion dollars. It has yet more from other sources. And because the government, risibly, continues to consider it a non-profit institution, it enjoys amazing tax breaks. What sort of fucked up institution is still trading its integrity for more money under these circumstances?

They’ve already gotten a jump on things in Baltimore, city of UD‘s birth; but you gotta figure there will be more Independence Day public slaughter as we approach the actual date.

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A whole lotta bullshit gets said about mass killings in this country, and UD might as well scroll through the latest crapola statements outta Balto.

And why should she do this? Because as long as everyone lies about the way legions of public events in this country are getting shot up, we’ll never get anywhere.

So let’s see what’s being said. Start with the headline in USA Today‘s reporting: VICTIMS OF BALTIMORE MASS SHOOTING etc. Since this was almost certainly a gang revenge event, we can expect that some of the dead/injured are perpetrators – an important distinction no one ever seems to make. It’s like calling Eric Harris a victim of Columbine.

A lot of what we feel in the wake of these routine large-scale murders needs to be disgust at the assholes who commit them. If we’re not allowed to cast a cold eye at the people who start the shooting, and the people they’re fighting with who continue the shooting and turn it into a massacre, the event dissolves into an emotional puddle.

The killing “marred the holiday weekend.” Marred? “Spoiled to a certain extent; made less perfect, attractive.”? Other than your MARRED evening, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?

Let us start describing these pathetic, terrifying events honestly. The killing destroyed not only a holiday weekend, but was one more nail in the coffin of many communities ever being able to gather in celebration, mourning, commemoration, graduation, etc. Ever. The killing once again graphically demonstrated the absence of police personnel in a city far too dangerous to attract enough applicants to the force. The killing is a humiliating admission of the failure of a once-significant American city to live a normal communal life.

The violence in Baltimore comes as federal prosecutors there this week touted their efforts to reduce violent crime in the city. 

Where’s the word “ironically”? Why does the writer not insert “even” between comes and as?

“I want those who are responsible to hear me, and hear me very clearly,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at the scene. “We will not stop until we find you, and we will find you. Until then, I hope that every single breath you take, that you think about the lives that you took, think about the lives that you impacted here tonight.”

If I were the killers, who I assume successfully accomplished their mission of killing some of their rivals, I’d be giggling at the would-be tough-guy mayor of a city that can’t stop everyone from killing everyone. “Lives you impacted” – wow. Impacted. Strong stuff.

I mean, kiddies, the street certainly ran with blood after this, didn’t it? ‘“The shots were just going on and on and on,” [one observer] said.’ The streets must have turned RED after thirty injuries and deaths. Is “impacted lives” the best we can do?

The governor’s statement was even worse. We’re doing everything we can…

But you can’t do anything; you can’t even hire a functional police force.

A police union official said in an email Sunday there were no officers specifically assigned to the gathering.

“There were only three officers assigned to the Brooklyn area of Baltimore City’s Southern District. This is a large area, and to police it safely and effectively you need about seven to eight officers per shift,” said Mike Mancuso, president of the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3.

Mancuso said about 2,800 officers are needed to effectively police the city, but staffing is down to about 2,100.

I mean, there’s your lead right there, and instead it’s at the end of your article: no officers assigned… Start with that, and ask why a large gathering in a bloody mess of a city included no police presence.

UD doesn’t claim cold honesty/vivid language about streets dripping with blood will make all the killing go away. But it can certainly help concentrate the collective mind. The vague crap we keep getting is worse than nothing.

… announces James Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus.

Here in America in 2023, it’s the millionth plus one time for America’s anti-abortion zealots (14th Amendment Protections for Zygotes Now!) to encounter the reality of experience — as in, strong majorities of Americans value access to abortion, and these majorities are acting and voting accordingly.

A year after the Dobbs decision, the anti-abortion movement is contending with two unexpected results. The first was neatly expressed by the banner headline in a newspaper that abortion rights groups We Testify and INeedanA.com printed to mark the Dobbs anniversary: “We are Still Having Abortions All Across the Country.” Not only did the Society for Family Planning’s survey of reported abortions find less of a decrease than many expected; it doesn’t account for the untold number of people who are accessing abortion medications through overseas or peer-to-peer suppliers, even in states where it is banned. Meanwhile, other states and localities are taking historic steps to ease abortion access. On the day [a prominent anti-abortion speaker addressed an important gathering], New York’s governor signed a law to protect abortion providers in the state who are openly planning to provide telemedicine abortions in states where it is banned.

… Since Dobbs, abortion rights supporters have won all six abortion-related ballot measures, stifled the “red wave” in the 2022 midterms, and cinched a key Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. In [a recent anti-abortion] convention’s host state, Pennsylvania, outrage over Dobbs helped Democrats flip the state House, elect a Democratic governor, and send Democrat John Fetterman to the US Senate. 

It’s the reality of experience all over again. What are the anti-abortion people to do?

They could ease up, or they could harden. The problem with easing up (‘Well … maybe we won’t go after rape and incest victims…’) is obvious; you’re allowing some abortions to happen.

The only option is toughening up, which inevitably means you’ll have to, among other things,

revoke enforcement authority from local prosecutors, many of whom have declined to enforce abortion bans, and give it to state attorneys general. [Plus] allow citizens to enforce abortion bans with civil lawsuits, apply RICO laws used to take down the mob to abortion providers, and weaponize anti-trafficking laws to make it harder to leave the state…

The increasingly popular neologism Cathoflucht (okay, well, I like it), an intentional echo of brutal Republikflucht laws used to punish people who tried to flee Communist East Germany, captures the attempted flight from states whose coalitions of anti-abortion-activist Catholics and Evangelicals have begun to restrict free movement out of abortion deserts. Gradually we will be able to trace a Republikflucht-like declension, from civilized, moderate efforts to force people who want out of no abortion states to stay in them, all the way to electronic tracking/threatening, to prisons, and to walls along borders.

A miniature dog too; and after all that expensive education, he filmed himself practically killing the thing!

And man, the school where he used to play football didn’t waste any time…

Oh well. There’s always the University of Florida.

Too horny to defend the homeland, Iranian men must be kept from the sight of female heads.

While the “Woman, Life, Freedom” street protests were largely snuffed out months ago, and stricter hijab rules have been enacted, legions of Iranian women … are still refusing to wear hijab in public.

… In mid-June uniformed and plainclothes security forces again raided coffee shops in several cities and beat customers over hijab rules. And the police chief of a northern resort province was filmed telling a subordinate, “Break the neck of anyone who breaks the [hijab] norms … and I will take responsibility.” 

LOLOOLOLOLOLOLLLLOOOOLOL

…. on the Supreme Court’s overturning of affirmative action.

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In an email to “members of the Harvard community,” the university’s president, Lawrence S. Bacow, and other senior leaders said it would comply with the ruling. Noting that Chief Justice Roberts had said that colleges could still take into account essays in which applicants discussed how race had affected their lives, they said they were writing to reaffirm the importance of diversity in “backgrounds, perspectives and lived experiences.”

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 [S]ome scholars say that dire predictions over sharp declines are alarmist and that schools will ultimately return to more racially diverse classes as they adjust to the new paradigm. They point to the University of California, which increased outreach in low-income communities. Over time, the number of Black and Hispanic students increased at most schools in the system.

Richard Sander, a law professor at U.C.L.A. who opposes race-based affirmative action, said that graduation rates for Black students improved after affirmative action was banned in California.

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Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School and an expert on the Supreme Court’s education rulings, predicted that the affirmative action decision could cause some state universities to move to race-neutral strategies for increasing diversity, such as the “top percent” model used in Texas.

In that state, students with the highest grade point averages at each high school are guaranteed admission to a public university, including the system’s flagship, the University of Texas at Austin.

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Wuh Oh…!

College admissions experts anticipate there will be increased pressure on elite schools to end preferential treatment for children of alumni, who are more frequently white and affluent, as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision.

Next thing you know we’ll be hearing there was something wrong with admitting dummy Jared Kushner to Harvard because his father gave the school 2.5 million dollars! Where the hell is this going?

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From another source:

Democrats and blue-chip universities ought to move toward merit and income-based admissions while striving to eliminate legacy preferences.

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Back to the NYT:

In 2020, with Donald Trump on the ballot, Democratic leaders in California launched a campaign to reinstate race-conscious affirmative action in California.

The governor and U.S. Senators and state legislators and a who’s who of business, pro sport and labor elites banded together, outspent opponents 19 to 1 and declared that restoring affirmative action in college admissions and hiring was a matter of racial and social justice.

Yet in a state dominated politically by Democrats and liberals, this referendum, Proposition 16, lost badly, with more than 57 percent of voters opposing it.

A recent Times analysis of that vote exposed a gulf between the party establishment and its voters. The analysis found that the opposition included a majority of Asian American and white voters and half of all Hispanics. Only Black voters offered majority support for the referendum. [See also… And see, from a scholar at the Progressive Policy Institute…]

The California results suggest the issue — and the Supreme Court decision — might have far less political salience than some Democratic activists predict.

When asked whether Trump violated the peaceful transfer of power on Jan 6, Ron DeSantis replied:

 “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing, you know, what happened, but we’ve gotta go forward on this stuff. We cannot be looking backwards and be mired in the past.”

Christie’s response:

“He wasn’t anywhere near Washington. Did he have a TV? Was he alive that day? Did he see what was going on? I mean, that’s one of the most ridiculous answers I’ve heard in this race so far. You don’t have an opinion about January 6th except to say, I didn’t particularly enjoy what happened? People were killed. People were killed … on Capitol Hill, defending the Capitol. We had members of Congress who were running for their lives. We had people trying to hunt down the Vice President of the United States, chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ And Donald Trump the entire time sat outside the Oval Office, that little dining room of his, eating a well-done cheeseburger and watching TV and doing nothing to stop what was going on until it got to the point where even he could no longer stand it. And Ron DeSantis doesn’t have any opinion on that?“

An earlier Christie post.

A rich dude in New Jersey just went ahead and cut down 32 of his neighbor’s trees because he wanted a better view.

Yes, he’ll be hit with an absolute fortune in fines. Yes, his name is all over the news so now everyone knows who he is and hates him. Yes, along with the fines he has to pay to replant the forest. Yes, almost certainly his enraged, equally rich neighbor will sue him for mucho damages on top of all the other payments.

All that and more is true. But it also remains true that this one POS has turned a beautiful mature forest into a dead mess simply because he’s a pig. We can’t fix that.

Recall UD’s tripartite plagiarism scheme (details here):

ATELIER

AMBITION

ADDICTED

A very successful public intellectual from Poland is credibly accused of plagiarism.

This case, as reported, has Ambition written all over it. A young man in a hurry seems to have been far too fast-lane to bother actually writing portions of his work, starting with his graduate school thesis.

Some of the plagiarism is apparently straightforward translation from English language sources; some of it seems to draw on other sources.

This is the long, Polish-language essay about the plagiarism; not only do you have to translate it, but you can’t get far in the text without subscribing to the newspaper. But anyway it’s a close analysis of the guy’s apparently prolific lifting.

Of course he’s hysterically screaming about suing the people who claim that he plagiarizes — and good luck with that, panie.

Twelve drowned in two weeks on Panhandle beaches! Quite a few of them because, apparently, they ignored big red flags/shouted instructions to stay away from rip tides.

Rescue crews probably don’t want any more drownings, so lifeguards will, I guess, double down on the shouting, leading beachgoers, in irritated response, to pack heat. (Useful tips here.)

The Onion weighs in.

There's little to say for its forthcoming plume

In fact I'll admit to a feeling of gloom
When I think of its flowers and cloying perfume

The recent remarks of Wisconsin State Representative Chuck Wichgers, during a debate in the state house, have gone viral.

Wichgers’ statement in opposition to birth control points to the failure of Wisconsin’s schools to educate its citizens in even rudimentary literacy, oral expression, and thinking skills.

“Nature has an intention and when you have that act—when pregnancy naturally occurs, that’s nature doing what nature does. The woman then has to counter nature by taking something that is highly systemic and highly invasive, according to the documents and the books that people that are pro the pill stated in their books. That’s a science. We would begin to see ourselves as the ultimate masters of nature, so when nature does something it’s supposed to do and then we say, ‘Let’s not do that’—we’re talking not about getting a pimple if you eat Doritos and eat chocolate; that would be contrary to a health movement or nature.”

It is hard to think of a more poignant demonstration of the importance of quality, universal education than this public statement by a high-ranking official of the state of Wisconsin. Surely with all of America’s wealth and resources we can do better.