The Logical Outcome of Illogical Non-Discrimination Policies at Universities
In my last appearance in PJ Media a couple of months ago (“Does Sexual Equality Require Preferential Treatment?“) I asked, “Will the movement for gay rights follow the same trajectory as racial equality — from non-discrimination to preferential treatment based on sexual persuasion?”
That question must now be applied to college, or at least to college applicants.
Inside Higher Ed has just reported (Feb. 26) that the University of Pennsylvania may be the first institution to launch what is described as an “outreach” program for gay students. That program, I think, suggests a number of interesting questions, but before we get to the assumptions underlying and implications flowing from gay outreach, let’s pause a moment at everyday, garden variety outreach. “At many colleges,” IHE’s article begins, “outreach” is
a standard part of the recruiting process once applicants are admitted. Current students who share individual traits or academic interests help reach out to prospective students with similar backgrounds or interests. So the young woman who expresses an interest in engineering will hear from a female junior in engineering. A black admit might hear from a black student, and so forth. The idea is that these students may be uniquely well positioned to answer questions and to make the case that the college is a good place to be a female engineer, a black undergrad, or whatever.
Reading that, I couldn’t help wondering, what if that “black student” were a female engineering major? Would she be tasked with reaching out only to black female prospective engineering majors? To all black females? To all blacks, whether prospective engineering majors or not? Given that heavy workload, shouldn’t Penn take “affirmative action” to make sure it has more than one black female engineering major? Moreover, since everyone knows (doesn’t everyone?) that Asians tend to be geeks who segregate themselves in math and science, shouldn’t Penn have an Asian literature major to reach out to prospective Asian English or philosophy majors (or two: one male and one female)? Doesn’t “diversity” require such an effort?
But even in the nether world of “diversity,” where “difference” is the coin of the realm, gays are regarded as, well, more different. As the IHE article states:
Outreach to gay applicants is different in some key ways from outreach based on academic interests or race and ethnicity. Typically, applications ask about academic interests and race and ethnicity (although that question is optional), and no colleges are known to ask applicants about their sexual orientation.
And while Penn has found ways to reach out to admitted applicants who are gay without asking the question, some advocates for gay and lesbian students are starting to talk about pushing colleges to add such a question (as an option). One group is preparing to petition the Common Application to do so. …
Shane L. Windmeyer, the founder of Campus Pride, a national group that works on behalf of gay students, also applauded Penn’s move and said that his organization is preparing to ask the Common Application to add a voluntary question about sexual orientation.
But why are those questions optional, or voluntary? If “diversity” is as crucial to the academic mission as diversiphiles maintain, why should applicants be allowed to keep the elixir of their “difference” a secret?
Rob Killion, executive director of the Common Application, said he wasn’t sure how the board would respond. He noted, however, that the nearly 400 colleges that are members all must abide by the group’s nondiscrimination statement, which covers sexual orientation.
What Mr. Killion didn’t note was something else the Common Application requires of all colleges that use it: those institutions must require information from applicants enabling them “to select a diverse student body.” Given this absolute requirement, how can colleges using the Common Application treat questions about race, ethnicity, and now sexual preference and orientation as optional and voluntary?
And speaking, as Mr. Killion did, of a nondiscrimination statement, what (if anything) should we make of Penn’s various declarations of fealty to the principle of nondiscrimination? The last time I looked, here are some of those statements:
Policy of Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action and Nondiscrimination
Penn adheres to a policy that prohibits discrimination against individuals on the following protected-class bases: race, color, sex (except where sex is a bona fide occupational qualification), sexual orientation, religion, creed, national or ethnic origin, age (except where age is a bona fide occupational qualification), disability (and those associated with persons with disabilities), or status as a special disabled, Vietnam era veteran or other eligible veteran.
….
Penn is committed to ensuring that all academic programs (except where age or sex are bona fide occupational qualifications), including social and recreational programs, and services are administered without regard to an individual’s protected-class status.
Penn is also committed to ensuring that its personnel and other employment decisions are made without regard to an individual’s protected-class status. [Emphasis added]
Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Programs
The University of Pennsylvania does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, color, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or status as a Vietnam Era Veteran or disabled veteran in the administration of educational policies, programs or activities; admissions policies; scholarship and loan awards; athletic, or other University administered programs or employment.
It would be hard to find better statements of fealty to the fundamental principle that individuals should be treated “without regard” to their race, sex, ethnicity, or religion, but inasmuch as Penn is permeated with preference policies it would be equally hard to find evidence that Penn actually practices the non-discrimination that it preaches.
I’ve always been opposed to discrimination. I’ve also always been a big opponent of affirmative action and other policies designed to end discrimination by discriminating in the other direction.
So, how is this going to work now? They’re going to do outreach to gay students. My first question is simple: what are they going to do when they approach a student, and he says “I’m not gay.” What’re they going to do when they fail to approach a gay student, and he sues because of the lack of outreach? Supposedly they’re going to ask about sexual preference, but what will they do when someone accuses them of asking the question for the purposes of discrimination.
It’s too late. The progressives have already infiltrated our entire society and have been implementing politically correct discriminatory policies for decades. What you’re trying to prevent is already pervasive throughout our entire country. What we’re really battling against now is how far we allow the progressives to take their crusade of discrimination. But the debate has already shifted so far into their favor, due to their unchecked iron fisted grip on our popular culture, it’s now considered bigoted to advocate equal treatmemt rather than equal results. The culture of entitlment and victimhood has been too deeply ingrained into our society by the progressives for we conservatives to have any real chance of reversing it. We have to think and operate like the progressives in order to turn back the tides of discrimination by gradually reshifting the goal posts through decades of popular culture influence. We have to be patient, passionate and relentless.
Affimative action(reverse discrimination)is an obscene abomination.People who support it are racial criminals that need to be exposed,and harassed for the racists that they are.Their spawn need to experience the consequences of their parent’s political degeneracy.Occupying (and vandalizing) the admission offices of the Ivy leagues,coupled with the publication of names addresses,and finances of affirmative aktion officers of major corporations,would be a good start.
Mr Golden, in ‘The Price of Admission’, wrote a scathing book exposing how money influences admission decisions, and conversely, how PC ‘diversity’ mandates that certain protected classes of students rate admission, despite their being wholly unqualified. At the same time, qualified students are passed over, all in order to ‘equalize’ the student body. Disgraceful.
HOWEVER, after a full frontal analysis of the Ivies, as well as other major universities, Mr Golden found that only two ! schools came out smelling like a rose – Caltech and MIT. Both schools admit only on merit-what a concept-have no quotas, and only distinguish between talented students and mega talented students, a truly meritorious system.
It is under a paradigm of true fairness-not phantom realities-that I influenced my sons, as they made their decisions regarding which schools to accept admission from. I am pleased that I steered them to the most equitable schools in the US, perhaps in the western world – Caltech & MIT. The only color blind, gender blind, non PC learning enviornments, where merit is NOT a dirty word.
Go Techers!!
The rest are just too far gone with PC dementia and should be revamped completely.
It has always seemed so obvious to me.
Liberals are uniformly and continuously obsessed with actively discriminating against straight, white males. They will do so even if it is illegal. They will do so even if they know it will cost them their job. They will do so even while simultaneously denying that they do it.
It is completely obvious that all their talk of being against discrimination is utterly dishonest B.S. This goes all the way up to university presidents, senior corporate officers, and the most senior state and federal politicians.
““Will the movement for gay rights follow the same trajectory as racial equality — from non-discrimination to preferential treatment based on sexual persuasion?””
Hey, it happened with the Catholic seminaries over the period of the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s. It was the great elephant in the room during the homosexual-pedarast-priest scandal that nobody dared to speak of. Well, besides “B-1″ Bob Dornan, perhaps our last honest Congressman. Why not the rest of academia?
Any University with a speech code is a bigoted organization and shoul loose not for profit status and the authority for student visas.
Note that we don’t just assess whether students are good students, we ask what major subjects they plan to undertake — and that is part of the balancing act for admissions for many schools. You don’t want a freshman class that is 90% engineering majors, nor one which is 90% English majors — you need major diversity.
So why stop at sexual “orientation”? Doesn’t a vibrant, robust, university need some “critical mass” of students who prefer sex outdoors? Or in restraints? Or with electrically powered aids? And let’s not forget the students who like to have sex with authority figures like professors and admissions officers.
I, for one, am eager to listen to that special college recruiting phone call from one Swedish gay female dominant to another (or would you have a submissive call a dominant?) And once they’re on campus, why stop at condom dispensing when you know some part of the student body really wants a….
You know, I think I’m going to stop there. What colleges are already doing is insanity.
BBB
So colleges have elitist, white progressives making decisions about who gets a higher education (and jobs) using tactics that would have discriminated against themselves if they were not already ensconced in their jobs. This is the apex of hypocrisy.
Do they hate their race? Do they loathe themselves for being who they are? What sickness inhabits their minds?
And is it really about diversity? I think not. If diversity was SO important, how come many of these same white, elitists progressive professors have not been canned in favor of some “protected class” of the month to replace them? Surely the universities are dominated by white progessive professors with the exceptions being the “made up to hire protected persons” departments that end in “studies”. If Penn were to fire most of their white faculty and staff and hire “protected of the month” persons, then I would have an instants regard for their merit.
If progressives really valued diveristy they would scream at the lack of it on the nightly and morning news shows. But they don’t. They would howl about the lack of protected minorities in upper level MSM positions like producers, reporters, editors, etc. But they don’t. They would ask for each Sen and Congressperson have a staff that was at least half filled by protected minorities. But they don’t. They would ask historically black colleges to hire white professors and admit white students. But they don’t. They would wonder as Bryant Gumbel did about the dearth of protected minorities in Summer and Winter games… But they don’t. And they would ask why Kos, HuffPo, CAP, MM and other progressive 527s do not have at least half their staffs comprised of protected minorities. But they don’t. How many blacks work for Geoge Soros anyway?
This is just another made up issue with which to hurt America and lead to her destruction.
That’s all we need, black female engineers! It’s bad enough that women in general have pushed white men out of the workforce and have produced ZERO INNOVATION AND ZERO ADDED VALUE in several decades – they are at worst parasites at best decent administrators – but that’s as far as it goes – it is one of the prime causes of the decline of business in the west.
Come on people. Is sexual and racial discrimination extant in this society? In a word, yes,and it is institutionalized, as long as the one discriminated against is a Caucasian male. Just read the want ads. “Equal opportunity hire, minority hire preferance.”
One must do as a friend of mine who owned a small trucking outfit did. He lost bids to affirmitive action hires on jobs, so he put his company in his wife’s name. She, being a minority and as the head of the outfit, allowed him to bid the jobs at a higher price. He then got the jobs, and working for a minority contractor, his wife, made more money than he would have had he got the jobs as a white male, and stayed busy.
The discrimination goes across the board. As a rated Airline Transport Pilot, I have gone to interviews for flying jobs, and been told by chief pilots, “Show up for the interview, but word from the top has it that we’re hiring a female.”
Lesson learned, You don’t have to be the most qualified for a job, you just have to be ethnically or biologically suitable. Think about that next time you go for an airplane trip. I’ll drive thanks.
Decades ago conservation biologists dealt with similar baloney in terms of habitat and species diversity. When you increase diversity at the alpha level – lets say within a given level like all majors at College X, you diminish diversity at the beta level, in this case between majors at College X. You also diminish gama diversity, in this case between Colleges X,Y, Z, etc. Maximizing diversity is also known as homogenizing, and of course homogenized raw materials are easier to manage.
There is another long term agenda to keep in mind here. Homosexuality and bisexuality are to be normalized while exclusive heterosexuality is to eventually be stigmatized. But I doubt there will be any outreach programs for heterosexuals at that time.
This progressive mindset is so ingrained in academia, I don’t think they even realize they are discriminating, which is why they do it subconsciously. I went to an event from a black student organization in January, and when Affirmative Action came up, I pointed out that it is toxic- it hurts everybody and helps nobody. It hurts qualified whites by denying them positions. It hurts unqualified minorities by setting them up for failure. It hurts qualified minorities by tainting their success with the suspicion that they didn’t earn it, while fostering general animosity between races.
One thing is sure, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Racial animosity and a free society cannot coexist. These issues must be resolved by making progressivism anathema to American society, or it will be resolved by violence.
From #13. “It hurts unqualified minorities by setting them up for failure.”
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There’s a prime example in the Oval office.
#14 PAUL:You nailed it!
Like others who commented, I encouraged my daughter to go to MIT or CALTECH. She just graduated with a PhD from Caltech in physics. We need to encourage the best students to choose merit over Ivy League. As a alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, I am ashamed of the institution and its ridiculous affirmative action and political correctness policies and programs. It is not only unfair, it is patently absurd from an intellectual point of view.
For this kind of comment I would be labelled racist. How silly. Yet Rosenberg has never had a scarcity of unbelievable anti-intellectual comments and studies from affirmative action advocates, diversity freaks, and patronizing academic elites who want to continue their moralizing about the poor and downtrodden but only if they are black, hispanic, and now gay. If we don’t watch out even our scientists and tech leaders will be mouthing this affirmative action dribble. Oh, I forgot. Bill Gates loves minority only scholarships; MIT had a program only for minorities on campus that was finally outed and widened to include everyone who qualified on merit; and there are an endless number of academic nitwits who want to diversify science faculty through preference selection procedures to “improve” the educational experience of its students. We need to stop this madness. Rosenberg is a clear thinker who continues to expose the absurdity of diversity and affirmative action policies on our elite campuses.
Helene (Pixie)? Just wondered if you are the same Helene Kaufman I knew at Penn. If so, I’d love to know where your life has taken you all these many years. If not, ignore this. Mitch Burnbaum
Fine. Like many others I will declare myself gay the moment makes legal and financial sense. And Muslim.
If they want to play the stupid game, I’m all for it. Have you ever noticed that nobody has really defined what exactly a minority is?
African american? I know a white guy from South Africa. He’s african american. Wait, he doesn’t LOOK right? I’m hispanic, since I have ancestors who emmigrated to mexico before the US aquired the land. You going to tell me that I’m not? You are going to define my rights by my appearance?
If you’re going to say “African Americans are only those whose distant ancestors were from Africa, then Dr. Leakey and I both say yes, every human in the US is African-American. Thanks Grandma Homo-Habilius!
The real fun is when HR people eventually get down to the point of “I know you’re not hispanic or african american because you look wrong.” That’s when you’ve got them. The racial difference isn’t definable in some way that excludes obvious members of the group they’re trying to promote.
No way on earth they’ll be able to say you aren’t gay. How could they possibly disprove it? Even video survellience could only let them argue that you’re bisexual.
The’re going to have a heck of a time defining Muslim, too.
Is there a test for gayness?
Are you gay because you say your gay?
If you are straight-acting and celebate, do you lose your gay-cache — and your bonus points on the college app?
I know that I am going to get blasted for this even though I am trying to agree with part of what is said here but here goes anyway. I will also probably be called a bigot, racist, progressive libtard as well. So be it.
Affirmative action as it has been implemented is a joke. I believe a sane form of affirmative action (for lack of a better term) is a good thing. I use the NFL as a perfect example. There has been a disproportionate number of black coaches in the NFL as compared to the number of black players. So to address this, the NFL asks each team look at a pool of qualified black coaches, and if one fits the bill, interview him. This policy gets a coach into the interview and then from that point, the coach is judged like any other. This system has produced 4 of the last 8 coaches who coached in the past four super bowls.
I am against any program, policy, or action that gives unfair advantage to an under qualified person, including the “old boy” network. Quotas and lowered admissions standards are not the answer, I agree. Intelligent attempts to level the playing field are needed. Before we sit back and complain about the status quo, perhaps we all should be asking ourselves how we can ensure that every person, regardless of race, gender or orientation can get a fair shake. This will start with our children. We as Americans must take an “it’s a village” mentality and find ways to ensure that all children get a good education and are able to compete when they enter the work force. The rest will balance itself out in time.