Admissions for Fun and Profit: Why Byerly Hall Won't Tell All

WETHINKS they doth protest too much.

In what may have been the longest single piece of writing ever to appear on The Crimson's opinion page, officials from the admissions office of Harvard and Radcliffe yesterday assailed The Crimson's recent series of editorials attacking Harvard's policies of preferential treatment for recruited athletes and children of alumni.

Their response uses a tactic that lawyers call "arguing in the alternative." It's as if an attorney defended a client accused of stealing a car and denting the fender by saying, "He didn't steal the car, and if he did, the fender isn't dented, and if it is dented, it was dented before my client stole the car."

Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons '67 and company argue that there isn't any difference between the way athletes and legacies and other applicants are treated, and if there is, the differences are not "meaningful," and if there are meaningful differences, they are perfectly excusable.

A masterwork of evasion and obfuscation, the official response recites the entire litany of official excuses for the policies, regardless of relevance, factual correctness or mutual contradiction. A few examples:

SAT scores are no big deal. The officials begin by attacking our supposed faith in the Scholastic Aptitude Test, arguing that the SAT is a poor indicator of academic prowess and that it discriminates against minorities and the economically disadvantaged. Considering that the authors of the response are quick to point out the 314 National Merit Scholarship winners in the Class of 1994 (the most in the country, they boast)--indicating a certain respect for the SAT--their argument strikes us as a bit hypocritical and contradictory.

Furthermore, we readily acknowledge that the SAT is a poor indicator of an applicant's worthiness. That's why we noted in our editorials that legacies and athletes--according to Harvard's own figures--score significantly worse than non-athlete, non-legacies in every single area of comparison, (except for the athletic rating, of course).

OK, but the disparities in SAT scores are no big deal. The response attacks The Crimson's mention of the disparity in the SAT scores between athletes and legacies and their non-athlete, non-legacy counterparts. It argues that the 130- and 35-point average differences are not "meaningful"--even though the Department of Education found them to be statistically significant--because there is not much difference between an applicant with a 1430 and an applicant with a 1300. Of course, over such a large pool, an average difference of this magnitude most certainly is meaningful. Fitzsimmons & Co. use up a lot of ink singing the praises of Harvard's truly gifted student athletes, and The Crimson has been careful to acknowledge them, too. The question remains: doesn't that mean that seriously marginal candidates are pulling down the curve?

OK, the differences are a big deal--but they're justified. The response argues that the socioeconomic and ethnic diversity of recruited athletes justifies their lower academic standing. To this, we have several questions in response. Are you talking about every sport? Does that include crew? Fencing? How many minorities play on the hockey team? How many working-class students are recruited to play lacrosse? (Fitzsimmons told a Crimson reporter, "I think you know which sports we're talking about.") How does ethnic and socioeconomic diversity explain the excusal of academic deficiencies among legacies, who presumably come from some of the nation's most prosperous families?

Legacy status is just a tie-breaker. Before The Crimson obtained information to the contrary, Harvard officials (including President Derek C. Bok) stated that legacy status was only used to break a tie between otherwise equally qualified candidates. Harvard explained legacies' disproportionate rate of admission (about three times the norm) by pointing out that children of Harvard alumni were likely to have been raised in an environment conducive to educational attainment. Now we know that the average admitted legacy is not more qualified, or even equally qualified, but less qualified than the average admitted non-legacy.

With this deception exposed, the administration turned to its backup excuse:

We need the money. Legacy admissions are a financial necessity. Happy alumni whose kids are guaranteed preferential treatment are more likely to give.

Washington Monthly editor Charles Peters once identified the "Firemen First Principle" whereby bureaucrats threatened with a budget cut insist that the only way to economize is to cut essential services. Whenever a conflict between ethical propriety and financial gain arises, Harvard invariably announces that need-blind admissions--not $35,000 to paint "artistic" stripes on the Quad--would be the first thing to go. By means of an accounting gimmick, Harvard sees that alumni contributions are channeled into scholarship funds, making it seem that every last dollar of alumni contributions is necessary to maintain need-blind admissions. It's an illusion.

Besides, how "need-blind" is an admissions policy that grants 20 percent of the places in each class to students admitted under the assumption that, hey, admitting them will be good for alumni contributions?

Two-hundred years ago, the French monarchy sold sinecures--hereditary privileges that virtually guaranteed the recipient wealth and status. The revenue from these sales improved the Crown's capacity to provide for the poor. Today, Harvard offers hereditary privileges that virtually guarantee the recipient wealth and status. The donations stemming from this privilege allegedly improve the College's capacity to provide for the poor. If Fitzsimmons cannot see the injustice in this, then perhaps the moral anesthetization of Harvard has proceeded farther than Allan Bloom feared.

If granting preferential admissions treatment for the sake of a few bucks isn't wrong--and Fitzsimmons says it isn't--then why not just auction off "tip" stickers to the highest bidders, to be attached to application forms in the promise of special consideration? It would be much more economically efficient and not a bit less just.

Athletics are just another extracurricular. The officials argue that athletes are treated the same in the admissions process as "French horn players" and those "likely to edit The Crimson." Then why does the admission office have an "athletic rating" separate from the "extracurricular rating"? Why do athletes score significantly lower in every other area of comparison? Although the officials are correct in pointing out that athletes' disproportionate admission rate alone does not prove that they receive preferential treatment, these figures do.

The Department of Education found comments on the folders of admitted athletes such as "A shaky record and so-so scores don't bode well for [the applicant's] case.... He'd make a fine addition to the team if the coaches go all out for him, but that's what it would take." Do appeals from debate-team advisors and Phillips Brooks House officers hold similar sway?

Implicitly recognizing the fallacy in their own argument, the officials turn to their alternative excuse: that an athletic program is "so ingrained as part of American college life that students and alumni alike have come to expect varsity sports at colleges." Agreed. Harvard officials point out that most schools bend the admissions standards far further. We agree again. But they have also claimed that some measure of preferential treatment is necessary to support a competitive Division I program. Here we must differ. We believe that if the price of "competitive" teams is lowering standards, we should be content to be uncompetitive or to compete at a lower level.

The Crimson is promoting divisiveness and stereotyping. We have always acknowledged the achievements of truly accomplished student-athletes and legacies. It is the admissions office which creates the stigma associated with these groups by admitting marginally qualified athletes and legacies who tar others with the perception of "dumb jocks" and "rich alumni kids."

The admissions office is an open book. The officials seemed positively shocked that we could claim to have "uncovered" the truth about legacies and athletes. They point to the "open" nature of the admissions process, meaning the number of officials involved and the amount of paper records generated. Our characterization of the admissions office as a "notoriously secretive bureaucracy" referred to the virtual impossibility of obtaining statistics from them, not to any paucity of paperwork in the office itself.

Perhaps we're being unfair. In order to give the admissions office a chance to prove its good faith on openness and to settle the question of whether athletes are treated differently from those applicants who excel at editing the paper or playing the French horn, we call upon the admissions office to release the aggregate applicant statistics of the men's hockey team, the football team, the field hockey team, the Crimson executive board and the Harvard Radcliffe Orchestra. Let's settle this little factual dispute once and for all.

Harvard's a great school, and The Crimson ought to know it. The reponse repeatedly emphasizes the high level of achievement among Harvard's admitted classes. It brags about Merit Scholars, Westinghouse Science winners, Putnam Mathematics stars, Rotary, Fulbright and Marshall winners, ad nauseum.

To our best recollection, our editorials have never disputed that there are a great many bright people at Harvard. Nor have we argued that Harvard should limit its consideration to SAT scores, or even to SAT scores and class ranks. We simply insist that Harvard stop granting unwarranted special treatment to those who have a good jump shot or a Harvard pedigree. We also insist that Harvard be completely forthright about these policies--a request that has yet to be granted.

Winning national championships and pleasing wealthy alumni are understandable aims. But if achieving these goals requires compromising Harvard's rigorous admissions standards and trampling all notions of justice and fair-play, then we are content to do without them.