In light of Pat Buchanan’s remarks on tonight’s Rachel Maddow Show, I want to say a few things about affirmative action and Ivy League schools. My information is a little dated because it’s been over twenty years since I attended Princeton High School and had reason to learn the acceptance practices of Princeton University and the other Ivies. Things may have changed.
But, in the 1980’s, at least, Princeton had a policy that was most unfavorable to me. They had only begun accepting women (like Michelle Obama) in 1969, and they still had many more male applicants than female. They had racial preferences. They gave preferences to the children of alumni (my parents went to Oberlin College in Ohio). And they had a goal of enrolling students from every state and as many foreign countries as possible.
As a white male from the town of Princeton whose parents were not alumni, I had every tiebreaker stacked against me. If I wanted to get into Princeton, I pretty much had to finish in the top two or three in my class, ace the SAT’s, and find a cure for cancer sometime during my junior year in high school.
If I had grown up in Alaska, I would have had a much better chance of getting accepted. Princeton might get twelve applications from Alaskans each year, and they’re going to accept one of them. Dozens of people from my graduating class alone applied to Princeton.
You might remember during the confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito that a controversy came up. When Princeton started accepting women, they were compelled to accept fewer legacy students (like President George W. Bush). This caused consternation among a lot of Princeton graduates who had always assumed that their children would follow in their place. As a result, a protest group came into existence called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
…Alito himself has claimed to be unable to recall his decision to join the reactionary group of wealthy Princeton graduates (founded in 1972), which became notorious for its opposition to women and minorities on campus, its vicious bigotry against homosexuals, and its defense of the interests of affluent white male alumni and their sons. A convenient credential back when he was applying for a post in the Reagan administration, where his résumé would be perused only by like-minded right-wingers, membership in CAP became troublesome under the hot lights of a Supreme Court nomination hearing.
In spite of the damage done to the legacy system, if one of my parents had graduated from Princeton, I would have received a major leg-up.
But, that’s the point. Being white didn’t help, but the vast majority of Princeton students were white. Being male didn’t help, but the majority of Princeton students were male. What really hurt was that I grew up in Princeton, and in New Jersey, and on the East Coast, and I had to compete with thousands of more dedicated white, male students from the same geographical areas. What really hurt was that my parents were not graduates or donors to the school.
Now, I didn’t have my heart set on going to Princeton. I was more of the Bruce Springsteen mindset about Princeton, New Jersey: “Baby, this town rips the bones from your back, it’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap, we gotta get out while we’re young.” Why Gov. Brendan Byrne made that the state anthem, I’ll never know. But, even if I had wanted to go to Princeton, I knew that my white friends (both male and female) were far greater competition than any Puerto Rican girls from the Bronx. And I didn’t think there was anything particularly unfair with Princeton wanting to enroll people from all races and from all fifty states and from all over the world. The only thing I thought was unfair was that the sons and daughters of alumni got special treatment. I didn’t appreciate that.
Princeton took a chance on Sonia Sotomayor, and look at how well it paid off.
When Sotomayor entered Princeton University on a full scholarship, there were few women students and fewer Latinos (about 20). She knew only of the Bronx and Puerto Rico, and she later described her initial Princeton experience as like “a visitor landing in an alien country.” She was too intimidated to ask questions for her first year there; her writing and vocabulary skills were weak, and she lacked knowledge in the classics. She put in long hours in the library and over summers, worked with a professor outside class, and gained skills, knowledge, and confidence. She became a moderate student activist and co-chair of the Acción Puertorriqueña organization, which looked for more opportunities for Puerto Rican students and served as a social and political hub for them. She worked in the admissions office, travelling to high schools and lobbying on behalf of her best prospects. Sotomayor focused in particular on faculty hiring and curriculum; at the time, Princeton did not have a single full-time Latino professor nor any class on Latin America.
Sotomayor later addressed the curriculum issue in an opinion piece in the college paper: “Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.” After a visit to university president William G. Bowen in her sophomore year did not produce results, the organization filed a formal letter of complaint in April 1974 with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, saying the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices. Sotomayor told the New York Times at the time that “Princeton is following a policy of benign neutrality and is not making substantive efforts to change,” and she wrote opinion pieces for The Daily Princetonian with the same theme. The university began to hire Latino faculty, and Sotomayor established an ongoing dialogue with Bowen. Sotomayor also successfully persuaded historian Peter Winn to create a seminar on Puerto Rican history and politics. Sotomayor joined the governance board of Princeton’s Third World Center and served on the university’s student-faculty Discipline Committee, which issued rulings on student infractions. She also ran an after-school program for local children and volunteered as an interpreter for Latino patients at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.
A history major, Sotomayor received almost all A’s in her final two years of college. Sotomayor wrote her senior thesis at Princeton on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico, and on the territory’s struggles for economic and political self-determination. The 178-page thesis, “La Historia Ciclica de Puerto Rico: The Impact of the Life of Luis Muñoz Marin on the Political and Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930–1975”, won honorable mention for the Latin American Studies Thesis Prize. As a senior, Sotomayor won the Pyne Prize, the top award for undergraduates, which reflected both strong grades and extracurricular activities. She was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1976 she was awarded an A.B. from Princeton, graduating summa cum laude. Sotomayor has described her time at Princeton as a life-changing experience.
There is not one chance in hell that I would have made an eighth of the contribution to the student body of Princeton that Sonia Sotomayor did, and even less of a chance that I would have won the Pyne Prize. One of the benefits of affirmative action is that it allows students to learn from each other. That is why Princeton wants to have a student from Alaska and a student from Pakistan in each class. I wasn’t about to come in and force Princeton to teach Latin American history or hire Latinos onto the faculty. A proper education forces students to get outside of their comfort zone and learn things they didn’t learn growing up. A diverse student body does that as well (and probably better) than any series of classes.
Another benefit of affirmative action is that an institution learns new things. Princeton learned from Sotomayor than they could enrich their product by hiring Latinos and teaching about Latino history.
I didn’t compete against Sonia Sotomayor to get into Princeton, but any sane institution would have picked her over me. For obvious reasons. Or, for reasons that are obvious to most people…just not people like Pat Buchanan.
